The long term objective of the proposed research is to improve hearing aids in environments with noise and reverberation. The approach is to develop a hearing aid accessory which makes traditional hearing aids much more sensitive to sounds coming from the look direction than to sounds coming from the side and rear. A 3-microphone array with signal processing to produce a directional sensitivity in the look direction 10 to 12 db greater than broadside and rear directions has been devised. The plan is to improve the circuit and to build 6 experimental models. Clinical methods for determining the efficacy of directional hearing aids will be devised. In Phase I the experimental models will be pilot tested with moderate and severely hearing impaired subjects in a variety of signal and noise environments and these results will be used to design and implement full scale clinical trials in Phase II.
