{
  "abstract": "In conventional hearing-aid personalisation, clinicians cannot hear what their patients hear, and patients cannot often reliably detect or describe what they hear. Self-adjustment can reduce this issue but requires user controls that adjust hearing-aid signal processing parameters to be effective, efficient and easy. In this study, we explored (a) the roles of interface complexity and stimulus type in the self-adjustment of linear frequency-dependent gain, and (b) how well individuals can adjust one sound to match another to assess the same interfaces and stimuli. Adult hearing-aid users with mild to moderate symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss repeatedly adjusted the gain (a) to their preference from individual prescription (n = 41) and (b) to match their previous preferences from a random starting point (n = 32) using three interfaces representing different bass/mid/treble configurations and three stimuli (music, speech and speech-in-noise). Exploratory clustering of the interindividual preferred-gain variability suggested three patterns of deviation from initial prescription: increased relative bass, overall gain reduction, and close to initial prescription. There were no substantial effects of interface nor stimulus on self-adjustment reliability (median {sigma} = 2.8 dB), whereas absolute sound-matching error increased with increasing interface complexity and centre frequency. Neither individual matching accuracy nor questionnaire responses predicted either self-adjusted gains or reliability. Overall, these results show that many - but not all - hearing-aid users can adjust gains with reasonable reliability, and while it can be difficult to predict the behaviour from the individual, the individual applies a similar self-adjustment behaviour across different interfaces and stimuli.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Hearing Sciences - Scottish Section, University of Nottingham"
  ],
  "article_type": "PUBLISHAHEADOFPRINT",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "J. Benecke"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "W. M. Whitmer"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/31z7ykcf9j5xp.bib",
  "cited_by": 1,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.06.11.26355463",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.11.26355463v2.full",
  "id": "31z7ykcf9j5xp",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.11.26355463v2",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "medrxiv",
      "otolaryngology"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7164579527",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.11.26355463v2.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-06-11",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/31z7ykcf9j5xp.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-02T12:20:44Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.06.11.26355463",
      "source": "medrxiv",
      "url": "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.11.26355463v2"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "openalex:2805|Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Does the method matter? Evaluating the effectiveness, efficiency and ease of hearing-aid gain self-adjustment",
  "title_text": "Does the method matter? Evaluating the effectiveness, efficiency and ease of hearing-aid gain self-adjustment",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-03T00:20:20Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/31z7ykcf9j5xp",
  "venue": "medRxiv",
  "versions": []
}