Vowel perception in listeners with normal hearing and in listeners with hearing loss: a preliminary study

Behavioral assessment tests for central hearing skills in individuals with sensorineural hearing loss: an integrative review

ABSTRACT Purpose: to identify the most used tests and the changed hearing skills in the central auditory processing of individuals with sensorineural hearing loss. Methods: an integrative literature review conducted between March and August 2021 in PubMed/MEDLINE, LILACS, SciELO, IBECS, and Index Psi Scientific Journals. The review included studies addressing central hearing skills with central auditory processing behavioral tests in subjects with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Two independent reviewers made the study selection, data extraction, and qualitative synthesis. The selection aimed at verifying whether the studies answered the research question. Literature Review: 39 studies were found for full-text reading; after applying the eligibility criteria, 13 studies were included in the review. Participants diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss predominantly had hearing changes in verbal tests, in comparison with normal standards for individuals without hearing loss. Thus, the most changed skills are the ones that depend on speech sound discrimination. Conclusion: the Staggered Spondaic Word Test predominated among the most used behavioral tests, while the most researched central auditory skills were binaural integration and binaural separation.

Testes para a avaliação comportamental das habilidades auditivas centrais em indivíduos com perdas auditivas neurossensorial: uma revisão integrativa

RESUMO Objetivo: identificar os testes mais utilizados e as habilidades auditivas alteradas no processamento auditivo central, em indivíduos com perda auditiva neurossensorial. Métodos: revisão de literatura integrativa, realizada de março a agosto de 2021 nas bases de dados: PubMed/Medline, Lilacs, Scielo, IBECS e Index Psicologia Periódicos técnico-científicos. Foram incluídos estudos que realizaram a pesquisa das habilidades auditivas centrais, através do teste comportamental do processamento auditivo central, em sujeitos portadores de perda auditiva neurossensorial, de grau leve a moderado. A seleção, extração e síntese qualitativa foram realizadas por dois revisores independentes. A seleção teve como objetivo verificar se os estudos contemplavam a pergunta do estudo. Revisão da Literatura: foram encontrados 39 estudos para leitura do texto na íntegra e, ao aplicar os critérios de elegibilidade, foram incluídos 13 estudos. Observou-se que os participantes diagnosticados com perda auditiva neurossensorial apresentam predomínio de alteração auditiva em testes verbais quando comparados aos padrões de normalidade estabelecidos para indivíduos sem perda. Sendo assim, as habilidades mais alteradas são as que dependem da discriminação dos sons da fala. Conclusão: entre os testes comportamentais mais utilizados, predominou o teste SSW. Quanto as habilidades auditivas centrais mais pesquisadas foram integração binaural e separação binaural.

What Acoustic Studies Tell Us About Vowels in Developing and Disordered Speech

Purpose Literature was reviewed on the development of vowels in children's speech and on vowel disorders in children and adults, with an emphasis on studies using acoustic methods. Method Searches were conducted with PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, CINAHL, HighWire Press, and legacy sources in retrieved articles. The primary search items included, but were not limited to, vowels, vowel development, vowel disorders, vowel formants, vowel therapy, vowel inherent spectral change, speech rhythm, and prosody. Results/Discussion The main conclusions reached in this review are that vowels are (a) important to speech intelligibility; (b) intrinsically dynamic; (c) refined in both perceptual and productive aspects beyond the age typically given for their phonetic mastery; (d) produced to compensate for articulatory and auditory perturbations; (e) influenced by language and dialect even in early childhood; (f) affected by a variety of speech, language, and hearing disorders in children and adults; (g) inadequately assessed by standardized articulation tests; and (h) characterized by at least three factors-articulatory configuration, extrinsic and intrinsic regulation of duration, and role in speech rhythm and prosody. Also discussed are stages in typical vowel ontogeny, acoustic characterization of rhotic vowels, a sensory-motor perspective on vowel production, and implications for clinical assessment of vowels.

The Use of Static and Dynamic Cues for Vowel Identification by Children Wearing Hearing Aids or Cochlear Implants

OBJECTIVE

To examine vowel perception based on dynamic formant transition and/or static formant pattern cues in children with hearing loss while using their hearing aids or cochlear implants. We predicted that the sensorineural hearing loss would degrade formant transitions more than static formant patterns, and that shortening the duration of cues would cause more difficulty for vowel identification for these children than for their normal-hearing peers.

DESIGN

A repeated-measures, between-group design was used. Children 4 to 9 years of age from a university hearing services clinic who were fit for hearing aids (13 children) or who wore cochlear implants (10 children) participated. Chronologically age-matched children with normal hearing served as controls (23 children). Stimuli included three naturally produced syllables (/ba/, /bi/, and /bu/), which were presented either in their entirety or segmented to isolate the formant transition or the vowel static formant center. The stimuli were presented to listeners via loudspeaker in the sound field. Aided participants wore their own devices and listened with their everyday settings. Participants chose the vowel presented by selecting from corresponding pictures on a computer screen.

RESULTS

Children with hearing loss were less able to use shortened transition or shortened vowel centers to identify vowels as compared to their normal-hearing peers. Whole syllable and initial transition yielded better identification performance than the vowel center for /ɑ/, but not for /i/ or /u/.

CONCLUSIONS

The children with hearing loss may require a longer time window than children with normal hearing to integrate vowel cues over time because of altered peripheral encoding in spectrotemporal domains. Clinical implications include cognizance of the importance of vowel perception when developing habilitative programs for children with hearing loss.