Perception of temporally modified speech in auditory neuropathy.
OBJECTIVE
Disrupted auditory nerve activity in auditory neuropathy (AN) significantly impairs the sequential processing of auditory information, resulting in poor speech perception. This study investigated the ability of AN subjects to perceive temporally modified consonant-vowel (CV) pairs and shed light on their phonological awareness skills.


METHODS
Four Arabic CV pairs were selected: /ki/-/gi/, /to/-/do/, /si/-/sti/ and /so/-/zo/. The formant transitions in consonants and the pauses between CV pairs were prolonged. Rhyming, segmentation and blending skills were tested using words at a natural rate of speech and with prolongation of the speech stream.


METHODS
Fourteen adult AN subjects were compared to a matched group of cochlear-impaired patients in their perception of acoustically processed speech.


RESULTS
The AN group distinguished the CV pairs at a low speech rate, in particular with modification of the consonant duration. Phonological awareness skills deteriorated in adult AN subjects but improved with prolongation of the speech inter-syllabic time interval.


CONCLUSIONS
A rehabilitation program for AN should consider temporal modification of speech, training for auditory temporal processing and the use of devices with innovative signal processing schemes. Verbal modifications as well as visual imaging appear to be promising compensatory strategies for remediating the affected phonological processing skills.
Audiology Unit, ORL Dept., Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. daliamsg_audio@yahoo.com
Dalia Mohamed
DM
Hassan
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D001364:Awareness; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003056:Cochlear Nerve / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003463:Cues; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; D005260:Female; D006313:Hearing Loss, Central / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D013998:Time Perception; D055815:Young Adult