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

The effects of three types of background noise (multitalker 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 only partially support the assertion that ecologically valid tests of speech perception should include interference representative of the spectral and temporal characteristics of that found in external environments.