Individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) often display poorer than predicted speech understanding. This deficit in speech understanding has significant negative psychosocial, emotional and functional consequences. For some persons with SNHL, the negative effects of hearing loss can be reduced through the use of hearing aids. Many individuals, however, continue to experience significant difficulties despite the use of amplification. Our broad long term research goals are to identify the factors that limit aided speech understanding of persons with SNHL and develop rehabilitative strategies to reduce the negative consequences of this highly prevalent disease. The long-term objectives of this study are to: 1) improve our understanding of the role that audiometric configuration (i.e., flat versus sloping hearing losses) plays in altering the relative utility of specific frequency regions to speech understanding of persons with SNHL; and 2) evaluate the relationship between audiometric configuration, audio-visual speech information, and the relative utility of specific frequency regions to speech understanding. To achieve these objectives the specific aims of this study include: 1) An evaluation of the role that hearing loss configuration plays in our ability to utilize amplified speech information in various frequency regions. 2) An evaluation of the impact of providing visual cues, to persons with flat and sloping hearing losses, on the relative utility of amplified speech information in various frequency regions.
These aims will be examined in a series of experiments within a three-year project that includes identification of test and control participants, sentence recognition assessments, threshold assessment in quiet and noise in multiple environments, cognitive and visual screening assessments, screening for the presence or absence of cochlear dead regions, and comparative analysis in a total of 92 subjects with SNHL and 24 control subjects with normal hearing.
| Hornsby, Benjamin W Y; Johnson, Earl E; Picou, Erin (2011) Effects of degree and configuration of hearing loss on the contribution of high- and low-frequency speech information to bilateral speech understanding. Ear Hear 32:543-55 |
| Hornsby, Benjamin W Y; Dundas, J Andrew (2009) Factors affecting outcomes on the TEN (SPL) test in adults with hearing loss. J Am Acad Audiol 20:251-63 |
| Hornsby, Benjamin W Y; Ricketts, Todd A (2006) The effects of hearing loss on the contribution of high- and low-frequency speech information to speech understanding. II. Sloping hearing loss. J Acoust Soc Am 119:1752-63 |
