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Vanderbilt Audiology Journal Club: Recent Hearing Aid Innovations and Technology

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1.  How does the combination of digital noise reduction and directional microphones affect listening effort, as evidenced by pupil dilation, according to Wendt and colleagues (2017)? No change Increases listening effort (makes it worse) Reduces listening effort (makes it better) None of the above

2.  What methodology choice did Wednt and colleagues (2017) make that increased study generalizability, and thus clinical implications, relative to previous studies? used listeners with normal hearing tested only new hearing aid users used ecological momentary assessment to measure effort in daily situations chose ecologically valid SNRs (around +1 and +7 dB)

3.  Based on their data, what conclusions did Bernarding and colleagues (2017) draw? EEG is a valid indication of listening effort; directional microphones reduce listening effort EEG is a valid indication of listening effort; directional microphones increase listening effort EEG is not a reliable estimate of listening effort; directional microphones reduce listening effort EEG is not a reliable estimate of listening effort; directional microphones increase listening effort

4.  According to Bernarding and colleagues (2017), what are they measuring to indicate listening effort? Single neuron recording Neural phase synchronization Cochlear microphonic Retinal atrophy

5.  How does the visually-guided hearing aid described by Best and colleagues (2017) steer the beamforming microphone? Based on spatial separation of the speech and noise Based on radar in the hearing aid Based on a patient's head location Based on a patient's eye gaze

6.  According to Best and colleagues (2017), which of the following conditions resulted in generally the best performance across conditions and participant groups? KEMAR - natural listening with no hearing aid based on an acoustic manikin BEAM - visually-guided beamformer BEAMAR - visually-guided beamforer in the high frequencies; natural listening in the low frequencies RADAR - radar technology at all frequencies

7.  Neher and colleagues (2017) tested patients with hearing loss using virtual acoustic scenes and simulated hearing aid settings. Which of the following was NOT evaluated in this study? Bilateral beamformer in the low frequencies; traditional directional in the high frequencies Traditional directional in the low frequencies; bilateral beamformer in the high frequencies Omnidirectional across all frequencies Beamformer across all frequencies

8.  Which of the following patient would likely benefit from bilateral beamforming in diffuse cafeteria noise? Patients with low BILDs (poor binaural hearing) Patients with high BILDs (good binaural hearing) Patients with asymmetric, moderate sensorineural hearing loss all of the above

9.  According to Anderson, Arehart & Souza (2018), which of the following measures are routinely used to fine tune signal processing? Loudness measures Patient report Presence of dead regions ANL tests

10.  Which of the following articles was NOT discussed in detail today? Reed and colleagues (2017) study of speech recognition with hearing aids and personal sound amplifiers Wendt and colleagues (2017) evaluation of the effects of digital noise reduction and directional microphones on listening effort at ecologically valid signal-to-noise ratios using pupillometery Bernarding and colleagues (2017) evaluation of directional microphones using EEG Anderson, Arehart & Souza (2018) survey of fitting and fine-tuning signal processing in hearing aids