Speech perception in noise by listeners with hearing impairment and simulated sensorineural hearing loss

This chapter suggests that masked normals exhibit better recognition abilities than do listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) on tests of sentence recognition, suggesting that the presence of secondary distortions degrades recognition ability. Speech-perception ability was assessed using the Speech Perception in Noise test. In theory, a comparison of the speech-perception performance of noise-masked normal-hearing listeners with hearing-impaired listeners would suggest whether deficits in speech recognition are the result of secondary distortions accompanying the loss of audibility, or simply reduced pure-tone sensitivity. Speech-perception ability was assessed by percent-correct scores and consonant error patterns. In the investigation reported earlier, the authors also compared the response biases of listeners with hearing impairment and simulated hearing loss. A prevailing complaint among individuals with SNHL is difficulty understanding speech, particularly under adverse listening conditions. An additional hypothesis for these findings is that individuals with SNHL exhibit different response biases than do masked normals when responding to sentential stimuli.