Changing With the Times: Managing Low-Frequency Hearing Loss Strategies for Amplifying Reverse-Slope Hearing Losses

the low-frequency speech information is because low frequency information may also be carried by high frequency fibers through temporal coding. Thornton & Abbas compared the speech recognition ability of 3 subjects who were identified with a low frequency dead region and 5 normal-hearing individuals in various filtered conditions. In the unfiltered condition, the speech scores were 56% to 88% for the impaired group and 94% to 100% for the normal-hearing group. For the highpass condition, the scores were 34% to 46% for the hearing-impaired group but 16% to 38% for the normal-hearing group. For the low-pass condition, the scores were 12% to 44% for the hearing-impaired group but 76% to 84% for the normal-hearing group. These findings suggest that amplifying the low-frequency dead region alone may not result in improved speech understanding. In addition, it suggests that people with a low frequency hearing loss may be able to utilize the surviving midand high-frequency hearing as effectively, if not more effectively, than normal-hearing subjects. Van Tasell & Turner reached similar conclusions. From a practical standpoint, this means that the application of a prescriptive target where the amount of gain is directly proportional to the degree of hearing loss may lead to less than satisfactory results in many wearers. High expectations for hearing aids. Because of their ability to utilize midand high-frequency signals, many adults who are born with a low frequency hearing loss develop normal speech and language skills. Although they may have some difficulties in groups or in noisy environments, many of these individuals have learned to manage their communication. As a result, even when these individuals agree to try hearing aids, they may have unrealistic expectations for the chosen devices and reject any Changing With the Times: Managing Low-Frequency Hearing Loss