| Sumario: | Recently introduced frequency modulation (FM) systems provide an adaptive adjustment to the emphasis of the FM system through the user's hearing aid via VoicePriority i™ (VPi). VPi measures the noise level at the listener's hearing aid microphone and adds gain to the FM signal when the background noise increases to a detrimental level. However, the potential benefit of VPi technology has yet to be determined. Therefore, the goals of this investigation were to determine behavioral performance and subjective ratings with VPi as compared to traditional, fixed-gain FM systems or hearing aids alone. According to speech- recognition performance in noise, VPi provided significantly better scores when compared to the traditional FM system in conditions with high levels of noise. Acceptable noise levels were also significantly better with VPi over the traditional FM system and the study hearing aids alone. Speech intelligibility ratings with both FM systems were significantly higher than ratings with study aids alone. Parent and child questionnaires yielded similar findings to the behavioral results, with significantly higher ratings for the FM system with VPi over the study and personal hearing aids alone. In conclusion, the FM systems with VPi provided superior performance and subjective ratings relative to traditional, fixed-gain FM systems or hearing aids alone.
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