Comments on "Evaluating a speech-reception threshold model for hearing-impaired listeners" [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93,...

As everyday practice as well as laboratory experiments have shown abundantly, the hearing aid falls short in eliminating the difficulties of many subjects with sensorineural hearing losses in understanding speech in noise. The attempt by Lee and Humes to demonstrate the opposite with only 11 spondees as speech-material does not alter this situation. As far as their experiment allows any conclusion, it supports the view that the speech-reception threshold of hearing-impaired listeners is characterized by a distortion factor as well as an attenuation factor.