Simulated hearing loss and phrase dictation

The effect of simulated high frequency hearing loss in young adult speakers was examined. Subjects were native English speakers with normal hearing sensitivity. There were three listening conditions, two filtered conditions simulating high frequency hearing losses similar to those often occurring in the geriatric population and one unfiltered, or normal condition. Subjects listened to the Phrase Repetition subtest of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. There were significant differences in the number of errors across the three conditions, with the most errors occurring during the greater simulated hearing loss. Such errors may be attributed to expressive language impairments when errors may instead be the result of a high frequency hearing loss.