Effect of hearing aid release time and presentation level on speech perception in noise in elderly individuals with hearing loss

To investigate the effect of compression time settings and presentation levels on speech perception in noise for elderly individuals with hearing loss. To compare aided speech perception performance in these individuals with age-matched normal hearing subjects. Twenty (normal hearing) participants within the age range of 60–68 years and 20 (mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss) in the age range of 60–70 years were randomly recruited for the study. In the former group, SNR-50 was determined using phonetically balanced sentences that were mixed with speech-shaped noise presented at the most comfortable level. In the SNHL group, aided SNR-50 was determined at three different presentation levels (40, 60, and 80 dB HL) after fitting binaural hearing aids that had different compression time settings (fast and slow). In the SNHL group, slow compression time settings showed significantly better SNR-50 compared to fast release time. In addition, the mean of SNR-50 in the SNHL group was comparable to normal hearing participants while using a slow release time. A hearing aid with slow compression time settings led to significantly better speech perception in noise, compared to that of a hearing aid that had fast compression time settings.