Long-term effects of non-linear frequency compression for children with moderate hearing loss

Objective: To evaluate non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) as a means to improve speech recognition for children with moderate to moderately-severe hearing loss following a six-month acclimatization period. Design: Within subject design with repeated measures across test conditions. Study Sample: Fifteen children, ages 5 to 13 years, with moderate to moderately-severe high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss were fitted with Phonak Nios, micro-sized, BTE hearing aids and evaluated after two six-week intervals with and without NLFC and again after a six-month period of consecutive NLFC use. Results: Using repeated measures analyses, the six-month results were compared to data that was collected following six-week trials with and without NLFC hearing aids (Wolfe et al, in press). Improvements seen with NLFC in the initial study (Wolfe et al, in press) were maintained or significantly increased in the present study. When compared to the six-week data, aided non-sense syllable speech recognition thresholds in quiet and speech recognition in noise were significantly better at the six-month interval. Conclusions: These results suggest that NLFC improves audibility for and recognition of high-frequency speech sounds for children with moderate to moderately-severe hearing loss. In many cases, improvements found with NLFC increased with a longer period of acclimatization to the technology.