Recognition of nonsense syllables by hearing-impaired listeners and by noise-masked normal hearers.
In the present study, speech-recognition performance was measured in four hearing-impaired subjects and twelve normal hearers. The normal hearers were divided into four groups of three subjects each. Speech-recognition testing for the normal hearers was accomplished in a background of spectrally shaped noise in which the noise was shaped to produce masked thresholds identical to the quiet thresholds of one of the hearing-impaired subjects. The question addressed in this study is whether normal hearers with a hearing loss simulated through a shaped masking noise demonstrate speech-recognition difficulties similar to those of listeners with actual hearing impairment. Regarding overall percent-correct scores, the results indicated that two of the four hearing-impaired subjects performed better than their corresponding subgroup of noise-masked normal hearers, whereas the other two impaired listeners performed like the noise-masked normal listeners. A gross analysis of the types of errors made suggested that subjects with actual and simulated losses frequently made different types of errors.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D006316:Hearing Loss, High-Frequency / Q000503:physiopathology; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*