Differentiation of Types of Presbycusis Using the Masking-Level Difference

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Novak ◽  
Charles V. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Internal Noise ◽  
The Other ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Old Adults ◽  
Masking Level Difference ◽  
Auditory Systems

Masking-level differences in quiet at 500 Hz were used to demonstrate evidence of elevated noise levels within the auditory systems of subjects with assumed neural presbycusis. The following five groups of subjects were evaluated: normal-hearing young and old adults; and older adults with metabolic, sensory, or neural presbycusis. The group with assumed neural presbycusis—that is, bilateral high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss and poor word-recognition performance—had masking-level differences (a) in quiet that were significantly larger than those for the other groups and (b) in noise that were significantly smaller than those for the other groups. The data suggest that elevated internal noise levels accompany neural presbycusis.

scholarly journals Recognition of Synthetic Speech by Hearing-Impaired Elderly Listeners

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 1180-1184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry E. Humes ◽  
Kathleen J. Nelson ◽  
David B. Pisoni
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Synthetic Speech ◽  
Closed Set ◽  
Open Set

The Modified Rhyme Test (MRT), recorded using natural speech and two forms of synthetic speech, DECtalk and Votrax, was used to measure both open-set and closed-set speech-recognition performance. Performance of hearing-impaired elderly listeners was compared to two groups of young normal-hearing adults, one listening in quiet, and the other listening in a background of spectrally shaped noise designed to simulate the peripheral hearing loss of the elderly. Votrax synthetic speech yielded significant decrements in speech recognition compared to either natural or DECtalk synthetic speech for all three subject groups. There were no differences in performance between natural speech and DECtalk speech for the elderly hearing-impaired listeners or the young listeners with simulated hearing loss. The normal-hearing young adults listening in quiet out-performed both of the other groups, but there were no differences in performance between the young listeners with simulated hearing loss and the elderly hearing-impaired listeners. When the closed-set identification of synthetic speech was compared to its open-set recognition, the hearing-impaired elderly gained as much from the reduction in stimulus/response uncertainty as the two younger groups. Finally, among the elderly hearing-impaired listeners, speech-recognition performance was correlated negatively with hearing sensitivity, but scores were correlated positively among the different talker conditions. Those listeners with the greatest hearing loss had the most difficulty understanding speech and those having the most trouble understanding natural speech also had the greatest difficulty with synthetic speech.

scholarly journals Differences in Auditory Perception Between Young and Older Adults When Controlling for Differences in Hearing Loss and Cognition

2022 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 233121652110661
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Lentz ◽  
Larry E. Humes ◽  
Gary R. Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Stream Segregation ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Perceptual Skills ◽  
Multiple Stimulus ◽  
Masking Level Difference ◽  
Hearing Assessment ◽  
Modulation Detection ◽  
Modulation Detection Interference

This study was designed to examine age effects on various auditory perceptual skills using a large group of listeners (155 adults, 121 aged 60–88 years and 34 aged 18–30 years), while controlling for the factors of hearing loss and working memory (WM). All subjects completed 3 measures of WM, 7 psychoacoustic tasks (24 conditions) and a hearing assessment. Psychophysical measures were selected to tap phenomena thought to be mediated by higher-level auditory function and included modulation detection, modulation detection interference, informational masking (IM), masking level difference (MLD), anisochrony detection, harmonic mistuning, and stream segregation. Principal-components analysis (PCA) was applied to each psychoacoustic test. For 6 of the 7 tasks, a single component represented performance across the multiple stimulus conditions well, whereas the modulation-detection interference (MDI) task required two components to do so. The effect of age was analyzed using a general linear model applied to each psychoacoustic component. Once hearing loss and WM were accounted for as covariates in the analyses, estimated marginal mean thresholds were lower for older adults on tasks based on temporal processing. When evaluated separately, hearing loss led to poorer performance on roughly 1/2 the tasks and declines in WM accounted for poorer performance on 6 of the 8 psychoacoustic components. These results make clear the need to interpret age-group differences in performance on psychoacoustic tasks in light of cognitive declines commonly associated with aging, and point to hearing loss and cognitive declines as negatively influencing auditory perceptual skills.

scholarly journals Telephone-Based Word List Recall and Hearing Ability

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 716-716
Author(s):  
Taylor Atkinson ◽  
Ross Andel
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Word List ◽  
Older Men ◽  
Ordinal Regression ◽  
Word Recall ◽  
Rank Test ◽  
Immediate Recall ◽  
Consonant Sounds

Abstract Certain consonant sounds called fricatives (e.g, “s” and “f”) are difficult to hear over the telephone; phones exclude high-frequency sounds that affect their intelligibility. This may be problematic for older adults responding to phone-based memory tests. Many older adults have some degree of hearing loss, and older men have it more in the high-frequency range. Hearing loss, in combination with phone bandwidth restrictions, may reduce older adults’ recall of fricative words. Participants (n=3,612, mean age=64.2, 60% women) in the 1998 wave of the Health and Retirement study (HRS) completed a word list immediate recall task over the phone. List 4 recall was examined because it was evenly split (5 each) between words with and without fricative consonant sounds. Subjective ratings of hearing and health, age, depression, and education were also measured. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed participants recalled fewer fricative (M=2.8) than nonfricative (M=3.0) words, Z=-8.47, p<.001. An ordinal regression for fricative word recall indicated a sex by hearing interaction; males with worse hearing were less likely to recall more fricative words, OR=.94, 95% CI [.88, 1.01], p=.076, after controlling for age, education, health, and depression. An ordinal regression for nonfricative word recall did not show a main effect for hearing or a hearing by sex interaction. For both models, age, education, and health were related to recall. Consonant sounds may influence phone-based word recall, particularly for older men. Attention should be paid to word selection when designing phone-based cognitive tests in order to avoid memory impairment overestimation.

Effects of Reducing Low-Frequency Amplification on Consonant Perception in Quiet and Noise

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Gordon-Salant
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Hearing Aids ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Identification Performance ◽  
Phonetic Feature ◽  
Consonant Recognition

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of low-frequency amplification on speech recognition performance by hearing-impaired listeners. Consonant identification performance by subjects with flat hearing losses and high-frequency hearing losses was assessed in three different hearing aid conditions, in quiet and noise. The experimental hearing aids all provided extra high-frequency amplification but differed in the amount of low-frequency amplification. The results showed that listeners with flat hearing losses benefited by low-frequency amplification, whereas subjects with high-frequency hearing losses exhibited deteriorating scores in conditions with greatest low-frequency amplification. Analyses of phonetic feature perception and individual consonant recognition scores revealed subtle interactions between hearing loss configuration and amplification contour.

Speech Audibility for Listeners With High-Frequency Hearing Loss

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Turner ◽  
Karolyn J. Cummings
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Asymptotic Performance ◽  
Profound Hearing Loss ◽  
High Frequency Hearing Loss ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Speech Information

This study investigated whether there are limitations on the benefit of providing audible speech information to listeners with high-frequency hearing loss. In a group of 10 listeners with various degrees of high-frequency hearing loss, speech recognition was tested across a wide range of presentation levels. For each of these listeners with hearing loss, recognition performance reached an asymptote of <100%. When the spectrum of the speech for this asymptotic performance level was compared with the listener's pure-tone thresholds, it was seen that providing audible speech to high-frequency regions (≥3000 Hz), where hearing loss exceeds 55 dB HL, tended to produce little or no improvement in recognition scores. In contrast, providing audible speech to lower frequency regions for a listener with a flat, severe-to-profound hearing loss did show improvement with increasing speech audibility, despite this listener's thresholds being greater than 55 dB HL. The present study adds further support to the idea that attempting to provide amplification to regions with severe high-frequency hearing loss (≥3000 Hz) may not necessarily benefit many individuals with hearing loss.

The 500 Hz Masking-Level Difference and Word Recognition in Multitalker Babble for 40- to 89-Year-Old Listeners with Symmetrical Sensorineural Hearing Loss

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (06) ◽  
pp. 367-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Wilson ◽  
Deborah G. Weakley
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing Loss ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing ◽  
Systematic Relationship ◽  
Masking Level Difference

The purpose of this study was to determine if performances on a 500 Hz MLD task and a word-recognition task in multitalker babble covaried or varied independently for listeners with normal hearing and for listeners with hearing loss. Young listeners with normal hearing (n = 25) and older listeners (25 per decade from 40–80 years, n = 125) with sensorineural hearing loss were studied. Thresholds at 500 and 1000 Hz were ≤30 dB HL and ≤40 dB HL, respectively, with thresholds above 1000 Hz <100 dB HL. There was no systematic relationship between the 500 Hz MLD and word-recognition performance in multitalker babble. Higher SoNo and SπNo; thresholds were observed for the older listeners, but the MLDs were the same for all groups. Word recognition in babble in terms of signal-to-babble ratio was on average 6.5 (40- to 49-year-old group) to 10.8 dB (80- to 89-year-old group) poorer for the older listeners with hearing loss. Neither pure-tone thresholds nor word-recognition abilities in quiet accurately predicted word-recognition performance in multitalker babble.

Masking Level Differences for Tones and Speech in Elderly Listeners With Relatively Normal Audiograms

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 422-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Grose ◽  
Elizabeth A. Poth ◽  
Robert W. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Central Effects ◽  
Masking Level Difference ◽  
Tone Detection

This study measured the masking level difference (MLD) for both 500-Hz tone detection and spondee word recognition in two groups of listeners. One group consisted of 9 elderly listeners with normal audiometric sensitivity bilaterally, up to at least 2000 Hz. The other group was a control group of 10 young listeners with normal hearing. The intent was to determine whether the elderly listeners exhibited a reduction in binaural performance that might contribute to the difficulties many such listeners have in understanding speech in noisy situations. By measuring MLDs in elderly listeners in the absence of marked peripheral hearing loss, it was hoped that any observed changes in MLD could be more strongly attributed to central effects. For both tone detection and speech recognition, it was found that the elderly performed more poorly than the young listeners, primarily on the NoSπ condition.

Assessment of the Efficacy of a Hearing Screening Program for College Students

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (07) ◽  
pp. 607-615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily J. Taylor ◽  
Diana C. Emanuel
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Prospective Study ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Screening Program ◽  
Diagnostic Testing ◽  
Hearing Screening ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Therapy Room

Background: The Towson University (TU) Speech-Language-Hearing Center (SLHC) conducts annual hearing screenings for college students entering education or health-care professions. Hearing is screened in therapy rooms, and students who fail the screening are rescreened in a sound-treated booth. Students who fail the rescreening are referred for a comprehensive audiological assessment, which is offered at no cost to students at the SLHC. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of the hearing screening program, to report trends in hearing screening statistics for the college student population, and to make recommendations regarding ways universities can optimize hearing screening programs. Research Design: The study included retrospective and prospective portions. Hearing screening records were reviewed from 1999 to 2011. The prospective study involved recruiting students to participate in diagnostic testing following the hearing screening and measuring background noise levels in the therapy rooms. Study Sample: Hearing screening records from 1999 to 2011 were reviewed. In addition, during the three-day fall 2011 hearing screenings, 80 students were selected to participate in diagnostic testing. Data Collection and Analysis: Data from the retrospective review were used to determine positive predictive value (PPV) between screening and rescreening. Return rates were also examined. For the prospective study, pure tone threshold results were compared to screening results to determine sensitivity, specificity, and PPV. Results: The retrospective file review indicated that the hearing screening in the therapy room had poor PPV compared with the rescreening in the sound booth. Specifically, if a student failed the screening, they had only a 49% chance of failing the rescreening. This may have been due to background noise, as the prospective study found noise levels were higher than allowed by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard. Only a third of students referred for diagnostic testing from 1999 to 2010 returned for recommended diagnostic testing. For the prospective study, specificity and sensitivity were good when considering hearing loss present at the same frequencies as those screened (1000, 2000, 4000 Hz) but poor in comparison to hearing loss overall. The screening missed many students with a high frequency notch, which was most prevalent at 6000 Hz. The prevalence of a high frequency notch was 21 and 51%, using two different criteria for establishing the presence of a notch. Conclusions: If college hearing screenings are conducted in rooms that are not sound treated, poor PPV should be expected; thus, an immediate second stage rescreening for failures should be conducted in a sound booth. Hearing screenings limited to 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz will miss many cases of hearing loss in the college-age population. College hearing screening program directors should carefully consider the purpose of the screening and adjust screening protocol, such as adding 6000 Hz and a question about noise exposure, in order to identify early signs of noise-induced hearing loss in college students. Programs should focus on ways to promote high return for follow-up rates. Estimates of prevalence of a high-frequency audiometric notch are highly dependent on the criteria used to define a notch.

scholarly journals High-Frequency Sensorineural Hearing Loss Alters Cue-Weighting Strategies for Discriminating Stop Consonants in Noise

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 233121651988670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léo Varnet ◽  
Chloé Langlet ◽  
Christian Lorenzi ◽  
Diane S. Lazard ◽  
Christophe Micheyl
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Hearing Aids ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Internal Noise ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Cue Weighting ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Listening Strategies

There is increasing evidence that hearing-impaired (HI) individuals do not use the same listening strategies as normal-hearing (NH) individuals, even when wearing optimally fitted hearing aids. In this perspective, better characterization of individual perceptual strategies is an important step toward designing more effective speech-processing algorithms. Here, we describe two complementary approaches for (a) revealing the acoustic cues used by a participant in a /d/-/g/ categorization task in noise and (b) measuring the relative contributions of these cues to decision. These two approaches involve natural speech recordings altered by the addition of a “bump noise.” The bumps were narrowband bursts of noise localized on the spectrotemporal locations of the acoustic cues, allowing the experimenter to manipulate the consonant percept. The cue-weighting strategies were estimated for three groups of participants: 17 NH listeners, 18 HI listeners with high-frequency loss, and 15 HI listeners with flat loss. HI participants were provided with individual frequency-dependent amplification to compensate for their hearing loss. Although all listeners relied more heavily on the high-frequency cue than on the low-frequency cue, an important variability was observed in the individual weights, mostly explained by differences in internal noise. Individuals with high-frequency loss relied slightly less heavily on the high-frequency cue relative to the low-frequency cue, compared with NH individuals, suggesting a possible influence of supra-threshold deficits on cue-weighting strategies. Altogether, these results suggest a need for individually tailored speech-in-noise processing in hearing aids, if more effective speech discriminability in noise is to be achieved.

Sleep Characteristics and Hearing Loss in Older Adults: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005–2006

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kening Jiang ◽  
Adam P Spira ◽  
Nicholas S Reed ◽  
Frank R Lin ◽  
Jennifer A Deal
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Sleep Duration ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
Sleep Disordered Breathing ◽  
Nutrition Examination Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Health And Nutrition ◽  
Disordered Breathing

Abstract Background Sleep characteristics might be associated with hearing loss through disturbed energy metabolism and disrupted cochlear blood flow, but prior evidence is limited. This study aims to investigate cross-sectional associations of sleep duration and signs/symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing with hearing in a nationally representative cohort of U.S. older adults aged 70 and over. Methods We studied 632 older adults aged 70+ years from the 2005-2006 cycle of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Hearing thresholds were measured using pure-tone audiometry and were averaged to create speech-frequency (0.5-4 kHz), low-frequency (0.5-2 kHz) and high-frequency (4-8 kHz) pure-tone averages (PTAs) in better-hearing ear, with higher values indicate worse hearing. Sleep duration and signs/symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing (snoring, snorting/stopping breathing, excessive sleepiness) were collected through questionnaire. Multivariable-adjusted spline models with knots at 6 and 8 hours were fitted for associations between sleep duration and PTAs. Multivariable-adjusted linear regression was used for associations between sleep-disordered breathing and PTAs. Primary models adjusted for demographic and lifestyle factors, secondary models additionally adjusted for cardiovascular factors. Results When sleep duration exceeded 8 hours, every additional hour of sleep duration was marginally associated with higher(poorer) high-frequency PTA (Primary:2.45 dB HL, 95% CI:-0.34, 5.24; Secondary:2.89 dB HL, 95% CI:0.02, 5.76). No associations were observed between sleep-disordered breathing and hearing. Conclusions Longer sleep duration is marginally associated with poorer high-frequency hearing among older adults sleeping more than 8 hours. However, we cannot infer temporality given the cross-sectional design. Future longitudinal studies are needed to establish temporality and clarify mechanisms.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document