The Effect of Noise and Hearing Impairment on the Processing of Simultaneous Sentences

Abstract

In everyday situations, communication involving multiple simultaneous talkers is the most difficult for normal hearing as well as individuals with hearing impairment. Such communication situations involve selectively attending to one of several talkers or simultaneously attending to more than one talker. The present study aimed at assessing the effects of noise and hearing impairment on selective and divided auditory attention tasks. Normal hearing a well as individuals with moderate and moderately sere sensori-neural hearing loss carried out selective and divided attention tasks to two separate sentences in quiet as well as conditions wherein the addition of speech shaped noise degraded the sentences O0 dB and -6 dB SNRs). The results revealed that as the degree of hearing loss increased, the performance on both the selective and divided attention tasks, in all the conditions worsened. With the addition of noise, performance on selective and divided attention tasks decline. In the divided attention task, performance on the message reported second was poorer in all the conditions and more affected by noise level than performance on the message reported first. When compared to listeners with normal hearing, listeners with hearing loss showed a larger deficit in recall of the second message than the first. Hearing impairment, as well as the addition of noise affected individuals ability to selectively attend too. Tasks involving the processing of simultaneous messages may be useful for assessing hearing handicap and the benefits of rehabilitation in realistic listening scenarios.