Speech-in-Noise Assessment in the Routine Audiologic Test Battery: Relationship to Perceived Auditory Disability.

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech Science
• Hearing Health

Background:

• Self-assessment of communication difficulty is common in audiology.
• Current practices often measure word recognition in quiet (WRQ), not speech understanding in noise (SIN).
• Limited data compare SIN abilities with perceived communication difficulty.

Purpose of the Study:

• Examine relationships between audiometric variables and perceived speech understanding.
• Determine how much variance in perceived disability is predicted by audiometric data.
• Identify predictors of greater perceived auditory disability.

Main Methods:

• Analyzed data from 1633 patients with audiometric assessments.
• Included Speech Spatial Questionnaire-12 (SSQ12-Speech5), WRQ, QuickSIN, and high-frequency pure-tone average (HFPTA).
• Focused on patients with minimal hearing asymmetry (≤10 dB HL).

Main Results:

• Greater hearing loss and higher QuickSIN signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss correlated with higher perceived disability (SSQ12-Speech5 scores).
• Hearing loss degree and QuickSIN SNR loss explained modest but significant variance in SSQ12-Speech5 scores.
• WRQ scores did not significantly contribute to predicting perceived disability.

Conclusions:

• Degree of hearing loss and QuickSIN SNR loss predict perceived auditory disability.
• These audiometric factors showed moderate accuracy in identifying patients with greater perceived disability.
• Speech-in-noise measures appear more clinically useful than WRQ for assessing perceived communication difficulty.