Factors affecting speech-in-noise and speech-in-speech recognition for school-age children with hearing loss

Children with hearing loss require a more advantageous SNR than children with normal hearing to achieve comparable masked speech recognition performance. Although children with hearing loss continue to have difficulties even when appropriately fitted with hearing aids, individual differences are often substantial. This study evaluated the influence of age, degree of hearing loss, aided audibility, and daily hearing aid use on speech-in-noise and speech-in-speech recognition on a sample of 47 children (5-17 years) with bilateral, sensorineural hearing loss. Age-matched children with normal hearing were also tested. Each child completed open-set monosyllabic word recognition in two masker conditions; speech-shaped noise and two-talker speech. Thresholds for 50% correct were measured in each masker using an adaptive tracking procedure. Compared to children with normal hearing, thresholds for children with hearing loss were elevated by an average of 7.4 dB in the noise masker and 6.5 dB in the speech masker. Preliminary results indicate that both age and aided audibility were significant predictors of performance for children with hearing loss in both masker conditions. Hearing aid use was a significant predictor of performance in noise. Degree of hearing loss was not associated with performance in either masker when aided audibility was taken into account.