Auditory Profile-based Hearing-aid Fitting: A Proof-of-concept study

Objective: The clinical characterization of hearing deficits for hearing-aid fitting purposes is typically based on the pure-tone audiogram only. In a previous study, a group of hearing-impaired listeners were tested using a comprehensive test battery designed to tap into different aspects of hearing. A data-driven analysis of the data yielded four clinically relevant patient subpopulations or 9auditory profiles9. In the current study, profile-based hearing-aid settings were proposed and evaluated to explore their potential for providing more targeted hearing-aid treatment. Design: Four candidate hearing-aid settings were implemented and evaluated by a subset of the participants tested previously. The evaluation consisted of multi-comparison preference ratings carried out in realistic sound scenarios. Results: Listeners belonging to the different auditory profiles showed different patterns of preference for the tested hearing-aid settings that were largely consistent with the expectations. Conclusion: The results of this proof-of-concept study support further investigations into a stratified, profile-based hearing-aid fitting with wearable hearing aids.