Effects of Background Noise and Reverberation on the Aided Speech Perception in Adults with a Severe or Severe-to-profound Hearing Impairment

Abstract

The effects of three types of background noise (multi-talker speech babble, cafeteria noise and speech noise) and two levels of reverberation (0.5 s and 1.0 s) on open-set sentence recognition by 20 adults with severe sensorineural hearing impairment (PTA = 61-80 dB HL) and 14 adults with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing impairment (PTA = 81-100 dB HL) were investigated. Open-set sentences were presented at 70 dB SPL with noise levels adjusted for each participant to reduce ceiling and floor effects. The results indicated that, for adults with a severe hearing impairment, the four-talker babble had significantly (p .05) decrease in speech perception score. The results of this study ..