The minimum speech test battery in profound unilateral hearing loss

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Neuroscience
• Speech and Hearing Sciences

Background:

• Monaural hearing results in disadvantages due to loss of binaural hearing benefits like head shadow and squelch effects.
• Assessing hearing difficulty in monaural individuals is crucial for appropriate audiological management.
• The Minimum Speech Test Battery (MSTB) is designed for evaluating word recognition in bilaterally hearing-impaired cochlear implant candidates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the utility of the Minimum Speech Test Battery (MSTB) for assessing hearing difficulty in individuals with monaural hearing impairment.
• To compare the performance of unilaterally hearing-impaired adults with normal-hearing adults using the MSTB.

Main Methods:

• A repeated measures design was employed, administering the MSTB in a sound-isolated booth under various auditory conditions.
• Conditions included quiet, noise directed towards the good ear, noise towards the impaired ear, and bilateral speech and noise.
• Participants comprised 10 adults with normal hearing and 10 adults with unilateral profound hearing loss.

Main Results:

• No significant performance differences were observed between groups in quiet conditions.
• The unilaterally hearing-impaired group demonstrated significantly worse performance on the Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) when noise was directed towards their good ear.
• The impaired group also performed significantly worse on the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) test with noise directed towards the good ear and in bilateral noise conditions.

Conclusions:

• The Minimum Speech Test Battery (MSTB) shows potential as a valuable tool for quantifying hearing difficulty in patients with monaural hearing loss.
• The MSTB can effectively differentiate performance deficits in noise, which are characteristic of monaural hearing impairment.