Over the past decade, the prevalence of hearing aid users in open-plan offices has risen significantly. This study investigates the potential effects of wearing hearing aids on cognitive performance and psychological state in noisy office environments.
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable change yet; findings from simulated hearing loss in normal-hearing participants may not directly translate to clinical populations — await replication in actual hearing-aid users before adjusting counselling on workplace hearing aid use.
Open-plan offices are a growing source of listening difficulty for hearing-aid users, and this study begins to quantify device benefit in an ecologically relevant workplace setting.
- 01Laboratory study simulated an open-plan office acoustic environment to test hearing-aid benefit.
- 02Normal-hearing participants wore hearing simulation to mimic hearing loss — a controlled but indirect method.
- 03Investigated how hearing aids affect speech perception and/or comfort in a noisy office setting.
- 04Findings may inform counselling on hearing-aid use in workplace environments.
- 05Simulated hearing loss design limits direct generalisability to clinical hearing-aid populations.
Hearing aids provide measurable benefit for speech perception in a simulated open-plan office environment.
studypartially supportedNormal-hearing participants with simulated hearing loss are a valid proxy for clinical hearing-aid users in laboratory settings.
studyunclear- PMID
- 42446341
- DOI
- 10.4103/nah.nah_259_25.
- Journal
- Nigerian Annals of Hearing
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Population
- Normal-hearing participants with simulated hearing loss in a laboratory open-plan office setting
- Intervention
- Hearing aids worn in a simulated open-plan office acoustic environment
- Comparator
- Unaided condition (no hearing aids)
Primary outcomes
Speech perception benefit of hearing aids in simulated open-plan office conditions