Effect of Hearing Aid Acclimatization on Auditory and Working Memory Skills in Individuals with Hearing Impairment

Abstract

Improvement in hearing and related domains following hearing aid use is termed as hearing aid acclimatization. Hearing aid acclimatization is observed in auditory and speech perception skills. However, it is not known if there is a transfer of acclimatization affects to other domains such as working memory skills. This study aimed to investigate the effect of hearing aid acclimatization on some auditory and working memory skills in individuals with mild to moderate cochlear hearing loss. For this purpose, working memory and auditory assessments were carried out on 10 individuals with cochlear hearing loss, immediately after the fitment of hearing aid and after one month of hearing aid use. Working memory assessment included reading span, auditory digit span and auditory sequencing and auditory assessment included gap detection thresholds, temporal modulation transfer function, pitch discrimination thresholds, duration pattern thresholds, concurrent vowel identification and speech perception in noise. Results revealed that hearing aid use for one month did not bring significant acclimatization effect on working memory skills and most of the auditory skills. However, speech perception in noise showed significant improvement following one month of hearing aid use.