Spatial hearing and speech understanding in noise in elderly

Abstract

Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate spatial hearing in elderly with and without complaint about speech understanding in noise. Methods Persian spatial hearing questionnaire (P-SHQ) was investigated in the elderly with and without speech understanding difficulty in noise and in normal young adults. ANOVA test was used for comparing results of the eight sub-characteristics of the P-SHQ among three groups. Results Both elderly groups had lower performance in source localisation, understanding speech in noise with target and noise sources from the front, understanding speech in noise with spatially separate target and noise sources. There was a significant difference between the two elderly groups in understanding speech in noise with target and noise sources from the front. Conclusions It shows that although the elderly have lower spatial performance than young adults, they still can benefit from the spatial separation of sound sources.