Children with minimal conductive hearing impairment: speech comprehension in noise.
Based on a study sample of 1071 primary school children (5.3-11.7 years), 10.2% of the children were found to have conductive hearing loss in 1 or both ears. Binaural speech comprehension scores of a subset of 540 children were analyzed. The results showed that children with bilateral conductive hearing loss had the lowest mean scores of 60.8-69.3% obtained under noise conditions. These scores were significantly lower than the corresponding scores of 69.3-75.3% obtained by children with possible middle ear disorders but no apparent hearing loss, 70.5-76.5% obtained by children with a unilateral conductive hearing loss and 72.0-80.3% obtained by their normally hearing peers. This study confirms that young children, who are known to have poorer speech understanding in noise, show further disadvantage when a bilateral conductive hearing loss is present.
Keogh
Tegan
T
Hearing Research Unit for Children, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, Queensland, Qld., Australia.
Kei
Joseph
J
Driscoll
Carlie
C
Khan
Asaduzzaman
A
D000158:Acoustic Impedance Tests; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D001315:Australia; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006314:Hearing Loss, Conductive / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D038781:Otoscopy; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D015995:Prevalence; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*