Speech intelligibility in noise with ear protectors.
Speech perception was tested in high level noise under controlled laboratory conditions in noise-exposed workmen and normal subjects, with and without a hearing protector. The group was further divided by age and English fluency, the latter group being included because of the high proportion of non-fluent English speakers in the Canadian workforce. In normal-hearing subjects the highest discrimination scores were found without background noise, they were lower with white noise as a masker, and even lower with crowd noise as a masker; wearing of a protector had no effect on intelligibility. The results for non-fluent English speakers were parallel with these results, but the scores were lower in all test conditions. In the presence of a high frequency hearing loss speech discrimination was lower than in the normals in quiet and in noise. The addition of a hearing protector dropped their discrimination score even further. In a flat hearing loss, wearing of a protector also worsened the speech discrimination score. The results are discussed.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004430:Ear Protective Devices; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006314:Hearing Loss, Conductive / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D011482:Protective Devices; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception