We are excited to announce the release of the Audible Contrast Threshold test, or ACT™, which is available with the latest updates of the GSI AudioStar Pro™ and GSI Pello™*. In 2 minutes, the ACT test will accurately estimate a patient’s ability to understand speech when in noisy background situations.
Because the ACT test is language-independent, it can be performed on any patient regardless of their native language. The best news of all is that the ACT test provides recommendations on how to adjust the hearing aid settings for the best listening in noisy environments. The stimulus used during the ACT test is a modulated noise mixed with a non-modulated noise. The modulated noise sounds like a siren. The non-modulated noise sounds like white noise. Both stimuli are presented binaurally at varying contrast levels to each other. The patient is instructed to press the response button whenever they hear the siren sound. By bracketing back and forth from an audible siren sound to no audible siren sound, the clinician is looking for 3 responses at the same contrast level, this is called the ACT Threshold.
The best way to use the ACT threshold is to optimize the adaptive features of the hearing aid, such as noise reduction and directionality, during a hearing aid fitting. The higher the ACT score, the poorer the predicted speech-in-noise performance. Therefore, the patient will need more assistance from the hearing aid to understand speech in noisy background settings.
Oticon is one of the brands that can import the ACT score for direct adjustment of the hearing aid settings.
Like other SIN tests, the ACT test predicts how well someone will understand speech in noisy environments, but in addition to that, the ACT test shows the clinician how to adjust the hearing aid for optimal performance.
Other exciting new features of the latest AudioStar Pro and the Pello with the Speech Plus license are:
AudioStar Pro:
- Added Audiogram Vibrotactile Symbol
- Weber Test Support
- Configurable Weighted PTA in Config App
- Device firmware can be updated from PC (future firmware)
- Option for color choice for Aided (HA and CI symbols)
- Ability to initiate patient response and VRA buttons from the QWERTY keyboard
- Clinician can now set the number of words to score for speech tests
Pello:
- Screen Resolution Improvements
- Added Weber Test
- Faster Startup and Transition Times
- Colored Sound field Symbols
- Masking Level Indicators
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