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ForwardFocus with cochlear implant recipients in spatially separated and fluctuating competing signals – introduction of a reference metric

M. Hey,T. Hocke,B. Böhnke,Stefan J. Mauger

Published 2019 in International Journal of Audiology

ABSTRACT

Abstract Objective: To clinically evaluate ForwardFocus in noise with experienced Nucleus® cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Design: Listening performance with ForwardFocus was compared against the best in class directional microphone program (BEAM®). Speech comprehension was tested with the Oldenburg sentence test with competing signals (stationary, three, six and 18-talker babble) in both co-located and spatially-separated listening environments. Additionally, normal hearing participants were tested monaurally in the same listening environments as a reference and to promote cross-study comparisons between CI clinical study outcomes. Study sample: Post-lingually deaf adult CI recipients (n = 20) who were experienced users of the Nucleus sound processor (Cochlear Limited). Results: Improved speech comprehension was found with the ForwardFocus program compared to the BEAM program in a co-located frontal listening environment for both stationary and fluctuating competing signals. In spatially-separated environments ForwardFocus provided significant speech reception threshold (SRT) improvements of 5.8 dB for three-talker competing signals, respectively. Conclusions: ForwardFocus was shown to significantly improve speech comprehension in a wide range of listening environments. This technology is likely to provide significant improvements in real-world listening for CI recipients, given the clinically relevant performance outcomes in challenging dynamic noise environments, bringing their performance closer to their normal hearing peers.

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