| Sumario: | Objective: Clinical evaluation of the efficacy of a new hearing aid binaural beamforming algorithm; specifically, comparing the aided speech recognition of individuals with hearing loss to that of omnidirectional processing, and a second group of participants with normal hearing. Design: Speech recognition in noise was assessed at two different sites using the Oldenburger Satztest (Site 1) and the Hearing In Noise Test (Site 2). The target sentence was presented from 0°, and the competing speech material (uncorrelated sentences of the same speech test) was presented from seven loudspeakers surrounding the participant. Study Sample: The hearing impaired individuals all had bilaterally symmetrical mild-to-moderate downward sloping sensory/neural hearing loss (Site 1: n=29, mean age 68.8; Site 2: n=14, mean age 65.8). A second group of participants were individuals with normal hearing (Site 1: n=15, mean age 64.5; Site 2: n=14; mean age 58.1). Results: Statistical analysis revealed a significant advantage (average SNR improvement of 5.0 dB) for the beamforming algorithm when compared to omnidirectional processing. When the beamforming algorithm was used by the hearing impaired participants, there also was a significant difference between groups at both sites, with better speech recognition performance for the hearing impaired groups fitted with the binaural beamforming hearing aids. Cohen's d revealed a large effect size for this latter finding for both sites.
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