ORIGINAL ARTICLE
EFFECT OF SENSORINEURAL HEARING LOSS ON THE TIME-COMPRESSED SPEECH TEST
 
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1
Clinica Barajas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
 
2
Fundacion Canaria Dr. Barajas para la Prevencion e Investigacion de la Sordera, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
 
3
Universidad de La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
 
4
Centro de Logopedia y Audiologia Isabel Olleta, Logroño, Spain
 
5
CREDA Jordi Perello, Sabadell, Barcelona, Spain
 
 
Publication date: 2012-03-31
 
 
Corresponding author
Franz Zenker Castro   

Franz Zenker Castro, Clinica Barajas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, e-mail: zenker@clinicabarajas.com
 
 
J Hear Sci 2012;2(1):25-29
 
ABSTRACT
Background:
The comprehension of spoken language is based on the analysis of complex acoustic signals by the central auditory system. Cognitive declines and deficits in speech understanding are seen in aged individuals and also in the hearing impaired. The Time-Compressed Speech Test is a low redundancy central auditory processing test that evaluates the closure ability to recognise degraded acoustic speech, words, or sentences.

Material and Methods:
In this work, we evaluated the difficulties in understanding compressed speech. Volunteer patients, both with normal hearing and with hearing loss, took part in the experiments. Also a group of hearing aid users were included. The stimuli consisted of speech words that were either unmodified in duration or time-compressed and presented at the most comfortable level.

Results:
An inverse relationship was seen between the compression ratio and the capacity to identify correctly the words presented. Compressed words were worse perceived by hearing-aid users than by patients with flat audiograms and with a high-frequency hearing loss.

Conclusions:
In patients with a flat audiogram, a deficit in the mechanism of temporal resolution exists. Furthermore, hearing aids facilitate the audibility of sound even though they do not act efficiently with speech at high ratios of presentation.

 
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