Consonant reception in noise by listeners with mild and moderate sensorineural hearing impairment

Abstract

The goal of this study was to determine the extent to which the difficulty experienced by impaired listeners in understanding noisy speech can be explained on the basis of elevated tone-detection thresholds. Twenty-one impaired ears of 15 subjects, spanning a variety of audiometric configurations with average hearing losses to 75 dB, were tested for reception of consonants in a speech-spectrum noise. Speech level, noise level, and frequency-gain characteristic were varied to generate a range of listening conditions. Results for impaired listeners were compared to those of normal-hearing listeners tested under the same conditions with extra noise added to approximate the impaired listeners' detection thresholds. Results for impaired and normal listeners were also compared on the basis of articulation indices. Consonant recognition by this sample of impaired listeners was generally comparable to that of normal-hearing listeners with similar threshold shifts listening under the same conditions. When listening conditions were equated for articulation index, there was no clear dependence of consonant recognition on average hearing loss. Assuming that the primary consequence of the threshold simulation in normals is loss of audibility (as opposed to suprathreshold discrimination or resolution deficits), it is concluded that the primary source of difficulty in listening in noise for listeners with moderate or milder hearing impairments, aside from the noise itself, is the loss of audibility.

Methods and Applications of the Audibility Index in Hearing Aid Selection and Fitting

“…This finding is in good agreement with results obtained by other researchers (eg, French and Steinberg, 1947;Pavlovic, 1984;Pavlovic and Studebaker, 1984;Humes et al, 1986;Pavlovic et al, 1986;Turner and Robb, 1987;Zurek and Delhorne, 1987;Dubno et al, 1989 [b]; Ching et al, 1997).…”

Consonant recognition loss in hearing impaired listeners

“…Some past studies have concluded that the suprathreshold SNR-loss may be non-existent compared to the audibility loss ͑Lee and Humes, 1993;Zurek and Delhorne, 1987͒. Lee and Humes ͑1993͒ used meaningful sentences to measure the SNR-loss, which is the most common stimuli for measuring SNR-loss ͑Plomp, 1986;Killion et al, 2004͒. Context, due to meaning, grammar, prosody, etc., can partially compensate hearing deficits.…”

Within-consonant perceptual differences in the hearing impaired ear

“…While the relative importance of consonants and vowels for HI speech perception remains uncertain (Hood and Poole, 1977;Burkle et al, 2004), here we concentrate on HI consonant perception. Many past works have examined HI consonant recognition using naturally produced speech, including Lawrence and Byers (1969), Bilger and Wang (1976), Owens (1978), Wang et al (1978), Dubno and Dirks (1982); Boothroyd (1984), Fabry and Van Tasell (1986), Dreschler (1986), Gordon-Salant (1987), and Zurek and Delhorne (1987). Overall, the effects of hearing impairment on speech perception are more severe in the presence of noise (Dubno and Dirks, 1982;Dreschler, 1986).…”