Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
5-7-2020
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Audiology (AuD)
Department
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Advisor(s)
Ayasakanta Rout
Erin Piker
Melissa Garber
Abstract
This study examined the effect of hair covering on hearing aid directional microphone performance. Nine adult, experienced hearing aid users (3 males, 6 females; mean age = 64.6 years) with mild to severe, sloping symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss were included in this study. Binaural Oticon Opn 1 receiver-in-the-ear hearing aids with closed domes were used to provide the recommended amplification for each participant. Speech Reception Threshold (dB SNR required for 50% speech understanding) was measured in all combinations of directional microphone (on/off) and hair covering (with/without) resulting in a total of four conditions. Results showed that directional microphones significantly improved speech understanding in noise (F(1,8)=15.51; p=0.004). However, there was no significant effect of hair covering in this small sample size of nine participants (F(1,8)=0.213; p=0.657). A pairwise comparison with Bonferroni corrections (α = 0.025) did not yield any difference between the two hair covering conditions (with and without) when the hearing aid was worn in the directional microphone mode (p=0.77). There was a large intersubject variability noticed in this small sample size.
Recommended Citation
Wagner, Sara F., "The impact of hair covering hearing aid microphones on directional performance" (2020). Dissertations, 2020-current. 26.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss202029/26
