Do Adolescent Hearing Aid Users Prefer Digital Noise Reduction to Be Activated? Findings From the Laboratory and Home Environments

The results of the current study demonstrate robust subjective benefits of advanced digital noise activation in the laboratory, with no effects on speech intelligibility. In addition, participants were internally consistent in the laboratory; their self-adjusted settings were consistent with the program they preferred during the double-blind, paired comparisons testing. However, the findings with the smartphone application demonstrate that, in general, they did not activate the advanced digital noise reduction during their self-identified difficult listening situations in the field. This result could partially be explained by the limited reported use of the smartphone application during the field trial. Future study is warranted to reconcile the laboratory and field trial findings in this study. In the interim, a reasonable clinical approach with limited negative speech intelligibility consequences might be to activate advanced digital noise reduction by default and provide smartphone application access in case a patient discovers a preference for an alternative noise reduction strength.