ABRs are electrophysiological event-related potentials, time-locked to a transient stimulus, and generated by the brainstem auditory pathways. Indeed, ABR testing is already a clinical routine to estimate hearing thresholds. Possible candidates could be based on Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABRs). Since the clinical assessment of HA outcomes for some individuals with disabilities cannot be performed using these behavioural measures, there is a need to develop objective measures for such populations. This is evaluated with self-report questionnaires (e.g., ), or with performance on speech-in-noise (SIN) tests, such as Bamford-Kowal-Bench sentences in noise (BKB-SIN) and vowel-consonant-vowels (VCV) in noise. Typically, a person’s benefit from HAs is based on their ability to perceive speech. One of the overarching goals of research in the audiology/hearing sciences is to develop objective measures to assess hearing aid (HA) outcome and benefits. Therefore, speech-ABRs evoked by a 40 ms are not a clinical predictor of behavioural measures in HA users. These findings indicate that PTA was more informative than any speech-ABR measure, as these were relevant only for a subset of the participants. In the VCV trees, performance was predicted by the aided F0 encoding latency and the aided amplitude of peak VA in quiet for participants with PTAs ≤ 47 dB HL. In the BKB-SIN trees, performance was predicted by the aided latency of peak F in quiet for participants with PTAs between 43 and 61 dB HL. The PTA was the only predictor in the SSQ-Speech trees. Two regression trees were fitted for each of the three behavioural measures with either feature set and age, digit-span forward and backward, and pure tone average (PTA) as possible predictors. For each recording condition, two sets of features were extracted: 1) amplitudes and latencies of speech-ABR peaks, 2) amplitudes and latencies of speech-ABR F0 encoding. Speech-ABRs were evoked by a 40 ms and recorded in 2x2 conditions: aided vs. Ninety-two HA users completed a self-reported questionnaire (SSQ-Speech) and performed two aided SIN tests: sentences in noise (BKB-SIN) and vowel-consonant-vowels (VCV) in noise. Here, we re-analysed an existing dataset to predict behavioural measures with speech-ABRs using regression trees. Instead, objective measures based on Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABRs) to speech stimuli would not require the individuals’ cooperation. Current clinical strategies to assess benefits from hearing aids (HAs) are based on self-reported questionnaires and speech-in-noise (SIN) tests which require behavioural cooperation.
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