Effect of Low Pass Noise on Speech Perception in Individuals with Hearing Impairment

Abstract

The current study investigated the effect of low-pass noise on speech perception in 20 adults with normal hearing and 20 adults with hearing loss. Their speech identification scores in a quiet condition and in the presence of three low pass filters masking noises (250 Hz, 500 Hz and 1000 Hz) was determined. In addition to word scoring and phoneme scoring, an error analysis was also carried out. The results revealed that the word scores and phoneme scores were higher in the quiet condition in comparison to the three masking conditions. However, there was no significant difference between word identification scores and phoneme scores across the three masking conditions. The individuals with hearing impairment obtained poorer word and phoneme scores in comparison to the normal hearing individuals. The error analysis showed that place errors occurred more than voicing errors, which in turn occurred more than the manner errors.