Abstract
The Articulation Index (AI) was used to evaluate a commercially available “noise reduction” hearing aid. First, a transfer function relating calculated AI to rated speech intelligibility was derived empirically for a group of normal‐hearing subjects. This function was used to predict speech recognition by 12 hearing‐impaired subjects wearing either the noise reduction hearing aid or conventional amplification. Subsequently, subjects rated the intelligibility of connected discourse presented under both aided conditions at five signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratios in speech‐weighted noise. The AI transfer function predicted speech intelligibility accurately for half the subjects. For the remaining subjects, predicted scores were typically higher than observed scores. If the effects of upward spread of masking were included in the AI calculations, these differences were minimized. For all subjects, speech intelligibility increased monotonically with AI. AI scores and speech intelligibility ratings were similar between the two hearing‐aid conditions, suggesting that S/N ratio was not increased by the noise reduction hearing aid relative to conventional amplification. [Work supported by NINCDS NS 12125.]
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