Table 1.
Demographics and pure-tone thresholds for each subject.
Table 2.
CROS/BiCROS hearing aid fitting information.
Fig 1.
Panel A shows the mean RMSEs for the three listening groups (unaided, aided with CROS/BiCROS, and aided with BAHA). Panel B shows the hemifield identification scores of the three listening groups. The hemifield identification score was calculated by counting the correct responses when the speaker identified by the listener was in the correct half of the loudspeaker array. Loudspeaker location was categorized as either on the poorer ear side or the better ear side. Error bars indicate SD. Asterisks (*) indicate significant differences, p < 0.05.
Fig 2.
Panel A shows the aided pure-tone threshold at each frequency for the three listening conditions (unaided, aided with CROS/BiCROS, and aided with BAHA). If the pure-tone threshold is scaled out, it is expressed as 110 dB HL (for 250 Hz and 8 kHz) and 125 dB HL (for the rest of the frequencies). Panel B shows consonant perception in quiet and noisy backgrounds for the three listening conditions. Mean and SD are presented as box-and-whisker plots. Panel C shows pseudobinaural benefits of speech perception in noise for the three listening conditions. The SNR threshold was acquired in the presence of noise for the following three conditions: (1) for measuring the summation effect, both speech and noise were presented from the front (FSFN); (2) for measuring the squelch effect, speech was presented from one of the two side speakers (± 90°) toward the better ear (NH), while noise was presented from one of the two side speakers (± 90°) toward the poorer ear (HL) (NHSHLN); and (3), for measuring the head shadow effect, speech was presented from one of the two side speakers (± 90°) toward the poorer ear, while noise was presented from one of the two side speakers (± 90°) toward the better ear (HLSNLN). Asterisks (*) mean a significant difference; p < 0.05 in post-hoc tests using the Bonferroni correction.
Fig 3.
SRD thresholds (A) and TMD thresholds (B) are shown for the three listening conditions. For the SRD test, a higher detection threshold indicates better SMD performance. For the TMD test, a more negative detection threshold implies better TMD performance. An asterisk (*) indicates a significant difference between two groups in post-hoc analysis (p-value was 0.05/3 based on Bonferroni correction).
Fig 4.
Panel A shows the study participant preferences for wireless CROS/BiCROS and soft-band BAHA. Panel B shows a six-item VAS for assessing background noise and sound quality in the three listening conditions. A higher score indicates that the sound was perceived better.
Table 3.
Correlation coefficients of hearing aid benefits on localization and speech perception.