HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal My Folders Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Kishon-Rabin, L. Articles by Algom, D. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Kishon-Rabin, L. Articles by Algom, D. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Associations and Dissociations Between Psychoacoustic Abilities and Speech Perception in Adolescents With Severe-to-Profound Hearing Loss

Contact author: Liat Kishon-Rabin, Communication Disorders Department, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Please address written correspondence to Liat Kishon-Rabin, Communication Disorders Department, Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel 52621. E-mail: lrabin{at}post.tau.ac.il.

Purpose: To clarify the relationship between psychoacoustic capabilities and speech perception in adolescents with severe-to-profound hearing loss (SPHL).

Method: Twenty-four adolescents with SPHL and young adults with normal hearing were assessed with psychoacoustic and speech perception tests. The psychoacoustic tests included gap detection (GD), difference limen for frequency, and psychoacoustic-tuning curves. To assess the perception of words that differ in spectral and temporal cues, the speech tests included the Hebrew Early Speech Perception test and the Hebrew Speech Pattern Contrast test (L. Kishon-Rabin et al., 2002). All tests were conducted for the listeners with normal hearing at low and high presentation levels and for the participants with SPHL at 20 dB SL.

Results: Only GD thresholds were comparable across the 2 groups at similar presentation levels. Psychoacoustic performance was poorer in the group with SPHL, but only selected tests were correlated with speech perception. Poor GD was associated with pattern perception, 1-syllable word identification, and final voicing subtests.

Conclusions: Speech perception performance in adolescents with SPHL could not be predicted solely on the basis of spectral and temporal capabilities of the auditory system. However, when the GD threshold was greater than 40 ms, speech perception skills were predictable by psychoacoustic abilities.

KEY WORDS: speech perception, psychoacoustics, frequency selectivity, temporal resolution, hearing impaired

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?