Phonemic confusions in quiet and noise for the hearing-impaired

In this study the effects of presentation level and signal-to-noise ratio on phonemic confusions are investigated in 25 hearing-impaired subjects. The confusions of initial consonants, vowels and final consonants in the perception of nonsense CVC words were determined at three presentation levels in quiet and three signal-to-noise ratios in noise. The group results of the different presentation conditions were analyzed by means of INDSCAL analyses. The presence or absence of interfering noise proved to be the most dominant factor: the presence of noise caused a reduced use of low-frequency information. The effects of presentation level are of secondary importance.