![Sample our Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5944/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Medicine-Dentistry-Nursing-Allied-Health.jpg"})
Abstract
Objective: The primary goal of this study was to evaluate a new form of non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) in children. The new NLFC processing scheme is adaptive and potentially allows for a better preservation of the spectral characteristics of the input sounds when compared to conventional NLFC processing. Design: A repeated-measures design was utilised to compare the speech perception of the participants with two configurations of the new adaptive NLFC processing to their performance with the existing NLFC. The outcome measures included the University of Western Ontario Plurals test, the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant word recognition test, and the Phonak Phoneme Perception test. Study sample: Study participants included 14 children, aged 6–17 years, with mild-to-severe low-frequency hearing loss and severe-to-profound high-frequency hearing loss. Results: The results indicated that the use of the new adaptive NLFC processing resulted in significantly better average word recognition and plural detection relative to the conventional NLFC processing.
Conclusion: Overall, the adaptive NLFC processing evaluated in this study has the potential to significantly improve speech perception relative to conventional NLFC processing.
Acknowledgements
This research was partially funded by a grant from Phonak, LLC. The authors would like to thank Michael Boretzki, Andreas von Buol, and Nikolas Hoepker for helpful comments provided during the development of this manuscript.
Declaration of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. While this study was being conducted, Julia Rehmann, Siddhartha Jha, Silvia Allegro Baumann, and Christine Jones were employed by Sonova and/or Phonak, the manufacturer of the technology evaluated in this research.