Date of Award
11-25-2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Communication Disorders, MCD
First Advisor
Mike McDaniel
Committee Members
Amy Shollenbarger; Joy Good; Richard Neeley; Susan Snellgrove
Call Number
LD 251 .A566t 2014 B63
Abstract
This study investigated the possibility of quantifying hearing aid benefit by means of the Audibility Index. The Audibility Index (AI) is defined as the amount of the audible speech spectrum available to a listener. Twenty-one participants with bilateral sensorineural hearing losses, each required to wear bilateral hearing aids, were recruited for this study. Utilizing FM tone stimuli, audiometric thresholds were established for each individual conventionally under earphones for the right and left ears, unaided in a sound field, and aided in a sound field. The thresholds were placed on a count-the-dot audiogram in order to calculate AIs for each individual. The AIs obtained under earphones were compared to those obtained in a sound field to determine if a correlation was present. No significant differences were found, which indicates that audiometric testing under earphones and in sound field yields similar results. Additionally, the unaided and aided sound field AIs were examined to determine if the aided AIs significantly improved over the unaided, which would indicate hearing aid benefit. Statistically significant differences were found, suggesting that the AI could be a metric to indicate hearing aid benefit.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Burkeen, Bethany Lauren, "Behavioral Measures of Audibility as Indicators of Hearing Aid Benefit" (2014). Student Theses and Dissertations. 743.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/743
