The Benefit of Remote and On-Ear Directional Microphone Technology Persists in the Presence of Visual Information.

BACKGROUND:  Both the Roger remote microphone and on-ear, adaptive beamforming technologies (e.g., Phonak UltraZoom) have been shown to improve speech understanding in noise for cochlear implant (CI) listeners when tested in audio-only (A-only) test environments.

PURPOSE:  Our aim was to determine if adult and pediatric CI recipients benefited from these technologies in a more common environment-one in which both audio and visual cues were available and when overall performance was high.

STUDY SAMPLE:  Ten adult CI listeners (Experiment 1) and seven pediatric CI listeners (Experiment 2) were tested.

DESIGN:  Adults were tested in quiet and in two levels of noise (level 1 and level 2) in A-only and audio-visual (AV) environments. There were four device conditions: (1) an ear canal-level, omnidirectional microphone (T-mic) in quiet, (2) the T-mic in noise, (3) an adaptive directional mic (UltraZoom) in noise, and (4) a wireless, remote mic (Roger Pen) in noise. Pediatric listeners were tested in quiet and in level 1 noise in A-only and AV environments. The test conditions were: (1) a behind-the-ear level omnidirectional mic (processor mic) in quiet, (2) the processor mic in noise, (3) the T-mic in noise, and (4) the Roger Pen in noise.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSES:  In each test condition, sentence understanding was assessed (percent correct) and ease of listening ratings were obtained. The sentence understanding data were entered into repeated-measures analyses of variance.

RESULTS:  For both adult and pediatric listeners in the AV test conditions in level 1 noise, performance with the Roger Pen was significantly higher than with the T-mic. For both populations, performance in level 1 noise with the Roger Pen approached the level of baseline performance in quiet. Ease of listening in noise was rated higher in the Roger Pen conditions than in the T-mic or processor mic conditions in both A-only and AV test conditions.

CONCLUSION:  The Roger remote mic and on-ear directional mic technologies benefit both speech understanding and ease of listening in a realistic laboratory test environment and are likely do the same in real-world listening environments.