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Masking Effects Caused by Contralateral Distractors in Participants With Versus Without Listening Difficulties.
Tetsuaki Kawase1,2,3, Chie Obuchi4, Jun Suzuki1
1Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Ear and Hearing
|October 9, 2024
Summary
Patients with listening difficulties experience worse speech intelligibility when distractor sounds are present in the opposite ear. Real-world sounds like music cause greater masking than white noise, suggesting current tests may underestimate hearing challenges.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Speech Perception
- Clinical Audiology
Background:
- Individuals with listening difficulties, even without peripheral hearing loss, often struggle with speech comprehension in noisy environments.
- Contralateral (opposite ear) auditory stimuli can significantly impact speech intelligibility, a phenomenon not fully understood in certain patient groups.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of contralateral distractor sounds (white noise and music) on speech intelligibility in individuals with listening difficulties and healthy controls.
- To compare the masking effects of different types of contralateral sounds in these groups.
Main Methods:
- Speech intelligibility of Japanese monosyllables was tested in 15 patients with listening difficulties and 15 control participants.
- Testing was conducted under three conditions: no contralateral sound, continuous white noise, and music stimuli presented to the contralateral ear.
Main Results:
- Patients with listening difficulties showed significantly reduced speech intelligibility with both contralateral white noise and music.
- The masking effect was more pronounced with music stimuli compared to white noise in the patient group.
- Control participants exhibited no significant difference in speech intelligibility across the masking conditions, though a trend towards reduced intelligibility with music was observed.
Conclusions:
- The heightened masking effect in patients suggests non-peripheral mechanisms are involved in their listening difficulties.
- Real-world sounds like music are more disruptive than steady noise, indicating that standard clinical speech-in-noise tests may underestimate real-world listening challenges.
- Using complex sounds like music or speech as maskers in clinical tests could better reveal listening difficulties in affected individuals.
