The importance of temporal fine structure coding for speech perception in listeners with sensorineural hearing impairment as compared to normal hearing listeners

The first experiment investigated the effects of mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairment on temporal analysis for noise stimuli of varying bandwidth. Tasks of temporal gap detection, amplitude modulation (AM) detection, and AM discrimination were examined. Relatively high levels of stimulation were used in order to reduce the possibility that the results of the listeners with hearing impairment would be influenced strongly by audibility. A general summary of results was that there was relatively great interlistener variation among the listeners with hearing impairment, with most listeners showing normal performance and some showing degraded performance, regardless of the bandwidth of the stimulus carrying the temporal information. A second experiment investigated the hypothesis that listeners with sensorineural hearing impairment might have poor gap detection due to loudness recruitment. Here, gap markers were presented at levels where loudness growth was steeper for the listeners with hearing impairment than for the listeners with normal hearing. Although gap detection was sometimes poorer in listeners with hearing impairment than in listeners with normal hearing, there was no clear relation between gap detection performance and loudness recruitment in listeners with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairment.

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Improvements in Speech Perception With Use of the AVR TranSonic Frequency-Transposing Hearing Aid

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jslhr.4206.1323 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 42 (6) ◽

pp. 1323-1335 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Hugh J. McDermott ◽

Voula P. Dorkos ◽

Michelle R. Dean ◽

Teresa Y. C. Ching

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Hearing Impairment ◽

Hearing Aids ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Sensorineural Hearing ◽

Limited Evidence ◽

Acoustic Characteristics ◽

Sensorineural Hearing Impairment

Five adults with sensorineural hearing impairment participated in a trial comparing the performance of the AVR TranSonic frequency-transposing hearing aid with that of their own conventional aids. They used the TranSonic for approximately 12 weeks, during which time systematic changes were made to the transposition parameters. Speech perception was assessed with each setting of those parameters and with the participants’ own hearing aids. Four participants obtained significantly higher scores with the TranSonic than with their own aids on at least one of the tests. However, analysis of the consonant confusions suggested that the improvement resulted mostly from the TranSonic’s low-frequency electro-acoustic characteristics. There was only limited evidence for 2 of the participants that the frequency-lowering function was effective at improving speech perception.

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An Across-Frequency Processing Deficit in Listeners With Hearing Impairment Is Supported by Acoustic Correlation

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2005/085) ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 48 (5) ◽

pp. 1236-1242 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Eric W. Healy ◽

Anand Kannabiran ◽

Sid P. Bacon

Keyword(s):

Hearing Impairment ◽

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Normal Hearing ◽

Sensorineural Hearing ◽

Acoustic Stimuli ◽

Temporal Asynchrony ◽

Sensorineural Hearing Impairment ◽

Processing Deficit ◽

Additional Support ◽

Speech Information

It has been recently suggested that listeners having a sensorineural hearing impairment (HI) may possess a deficit in their ability to integrate speech information across different frequencies. When presented with a task that required across-frequency integration of speech patterns, listeners with HI performed more poorly than their normal-hearing (NH) counterparts (E. W. Healy & S. P. Bacon, 2002; C. W. Turner, S.-L. Chi, & S. Flock, 1999). E. W. Healy and S. P. Bacon (2002) also showed that performance of the listeners with HI fell more steeply when increasing amounts of temporal asynchrony were introduced to the pair of widely separated patterns. In the current study, the correlations between the fluctuating envelopes of the acoustic stimuli were calculated, both when the patterns were aligned and at various between-band asynchronies. It was found that the rate at which acoustic correlation fell as a function of asynchrony closely matched the rate at which intelligibility fell for the NH listeners. However, the intelligibility scores produced by the listeners with HI fell more steeply than the acoustic analysis would suggest. Thus, these data provide additional support for the hypothesis that individuals having sensorineural HI may have a deficit in their ability to integrate speech information present at different frequencies.

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