Musicians can sometimes achieve better speech recognition in noisy backgrounds than non-musicians, a phenomenon referred to as the "musician advantage effect." In addition, musicians are known to possess a finer sense of pitch than non-musicians. The present study examined the hypothesis that the latter fact could explain the former. Four experiments measured speech reception threshold for a ta...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the effects of variations in the settings for minimum stimulation levels on speech understanding for adult cochlear implant recipients using the Med El Tempo+ speech processor. DESIGN Fifteen patients served as listeners. The test material included sentences presented at a conversational level in noise (74 dB SPL at +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio), ...

introduction: the use of cartilage as a grafting material has been advocated in cases where there is a high risk of graft failure, such as subtotal perforations, adhesive processes, and residual defects after primary tympanoplasties. the purpose of this study was to compare the graft acceptance rates and auditory outcomes of cartilage tympanoplasty operations using a palisade technique with tho...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Listeners with sensorineural hearing loss want to compensate for their narrow dynamic range from appropriate compression functions of hearing aids. The present study aimed to determine which compression threshold and release time of nonlinear hearing aids might affect speech recognition and speech quality judgments. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Ten elderly listeners with sym...

Introduction: The use of cartilage as a grafting material has been advocated in cases where there is a high risk of graft failure, such as subtotal perforations, adhesive processes, and residual defects after primary tympanoplasties. The purpose of this study was to compare the graft acceptance rates and auditory outcomes of cartilage tympanoplasty operations using a palisade technique with tho...

This study evaluates a spatial-filtering algorithm as a method to improve speech reception for cochlear-implant (CI) users in reverberant environments with multiple noise sources. The algorithm was designed to filter sounds using phase differences between two microphones situated 1 cm apart in a behind-the-ear hearing-aid capsule. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured using a Coordin...

Objective: The development of a valid and reliable Afrikaans test of sentence recognition thresholds in noise. Design: A collection of sentences was developed, rated for naturalness and grammatical complexity, and digitally recorded using a female speaker. Sentences found to have similar psychometric curve slopes, with equivalent intelligibility at three different noise levels, were arranged in...