A hearing-device benefit must exceed roughly 6 dB SNR to prompt voluntary switching.

Evidence

Using the same stimuli as the earlier rating experiment, 35 participants (median age: 62 years; range: 38–74) of varying hearing ability (median BE4FA: 34 dB HL; range: 4–80) were asked to consider the reference SNR (either ‑6 or + 6 dB) interval as an example of their current device, and the reference SNR + ΔSNR (2, 4, 6 or 8 dB) interval as a different device. They were asked on each trial if they would swap their current for the different device in order to get that change (yes/no). Each condition (reference SNR × ΔSNR) was repeated 30 times in randomized order for a total of 240 trials. The results are shown in the left panel of Fig. 3 . When the initial SNR was ‑6 dB, the proportion of times that participants, on average, were willing to swap exceeded chance only when the ΔSNR was greater than 4 dB (i.e., 70 % at 6 dB SNR, and 87 % at 8 dB SNR). When the initial SNR was + 6 dB, willingness to swap just exceeded chance (56 % willing to swap) at a ΔSNR of 8 dB. The JMD based on the swap paradigm is therefore dependent on the difficulty of the situation (i.e., the reference SNR), but appears to be at least 6 dB SNR. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5702

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why does the JMD scale with reference SNR so strongly — is this a perceptual compression effect or a loss-aversion/valuation artifact?