The overall goal of this study is to examine the intelligibility differences of clear and conversational speech and also to objectively analyze the acoustic properties contributing to these differences. Seventeen postlingual stable sensory-neural hearing impaired listeners with an age range of 17-40 years were recruited for the study. Forty Telugu sentences spoken by a female Telugu speaker in both clear and conversational speech styles were used as stimuli for the subjects. Results revealed that mean scores of clear speech were higher (mean = 84.5) when compared to conversational speech (mean = 61.4) with an advantage of 23.1% points. Acoustic properties revealed greater fundamental frequency (f0) and intensity, longer duration, higher consonant-vowel ratio (CVR) and greater temporal energy in clear speech.

Cochlear implantees have considerably good speech understanding abilities in quiet surroundings. But, ambient noise poses significant difficulties in understanding speech for these individuals. Bimodal stimulation is still not used by many Indian implantees in spite of reports that bimodal stimulation is beneficial for speech understanding in noise as compared to cochlear implant alone and also prevents auditory deprivation in the un-implanted ear. The aim of the study is to evaluate the benefits of bimodal stimulation in children in an Indian cochlear implant clinic. A group of 14 children who have been using cochlear implants served as subjects in this study. They were fitted with advanced digital hearing aids in their un-implanted ears to provide bimodal stimulation. Results revealed that bimodal stimulation did not bring greater change in speech scores in quiet surroundings but have shown a noticeable improvement in noisy ambience. Hence the present study suggests that bimodal stimulation would benefit children with cochlear implants especially in adverse listening conditions.

Introduction  For many reasons, it is important for audiologists and consumers to document improvement and benefit from amplification device at various stages of uses of amplification device. Professional are also interested to see the impact of amplification device on the consumer's auditory performance at different stages i.e. immediately after fitting and over several months of use. Objective  The objective of the study was to measure the hearing aid benefit following 6 months – 1-year usage, 1 year – 1.5 yeaŕs usage, and 1.5 yeaŕs – 2 years' usage. Methods  A total of 45 subjects participated in the study and were divided equally in three groups: hearing aid users from 6 months to 1 year, 1 year to 1.5 year, and 1.5 year to two years. All subjects responded to the Hearing Aid Benefit Questionnaire (63 questions), which assesses six domains of listening skills. Result  Results showed the mean scores obtained were higher for all domains in the aided condition, as compared with unaided condition for all groups. Results also showed a significant improvement in the overall score between first-time users with hearing aid experience of six months to one year and hearing aid users using hearing aids for a period between 1.5 and 2 years. Conclusion  It is possible to conclude that measuring the hearing aid benefit with the self-assessment questionnaires will assist the clinicians in making judgments about the areas in which a patient is experiencing more difficulty in everyday listening environment and in revising the possible technologies.

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Background: Individuals fitted with hearing aids complain of the unnatural sound quality of their voice, other internally generated sounds such as chewing and swallowing sounds "hollow", "muffled" sounds. Receiver-In-Canal hearing aids are favored due to small size, discrete appearance and ability to minimize occlusion. Aim: To compare the performance of Receiver-In-Canal (RIC) to traditional ear tip (ET), ear moulds (EM) fittings using Functional gain measures. Method: Ten subjects with flat moderately severe sensori neural hearing loss participated in the study. Subjective unaided and aided measures for digital BTE hearing aids with ear tip, ear mould or Receiver-In-Canal for pure tones of 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 2000 Hz, 4000 Hz were obtained. Results and Discussion: Higher scores were obtained with Receiver-In-Canal fitting on Functional gain measures. No significant difference between all the three conditions was obtained at low frequencies especially at 500 Hz, as Receiver-In-Canal hearing aids attenuate low frequency sounds automatically when the ear is left open (up to 30 dB less amplification at 500 Hz) especially for hearing in noisy situations. Conclusion: The results suggest that Receiver-In-Canal fittings are an effective means of overcoming the major barriers to the acceptance of amplification and further suggest the clinical importance of subjective measures in measuring aided benefit of open-fit devices in the rehabilitation of person's with moderately severe to severe SN hearing loss.