OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Fanconi anemia is a hereditary chromosomal instability disorder. Hearing loss and ear abnormalities are among the many manifestations reported in this disorder. In addition, Fanconi anemia patients often complain about hearing difficulties in situations with background noise (speech perception in noise difficulties). Our study aimed to describe the prevalence of hearing lo...

Fifty seven children with impaired hearing aged 4-12 years were evaluated with speech perception and language measures as the first stage of a longitudinal study. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF) and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were used to evaluate the children’s spoken language. Regression analyses indicated that scores on both tests were significantly correl...

OBJECTIVE The aim was to investigate whether frequency compression (FC) hearing aids provide additional benefit to that conferred by conventional amplification. DESIGN Participants wore the same hearing aid with FC enabled and disabled for six weeks (ABA design) in each condition. Speech recognition tests (in both quiet and in noise) were administered alongside two questionnaires. Performance...

The relative contributions of bottom-up versus top-down sensory inputs to auditory learning are not well established. In our experiment, listeners were instructed to perform either a frequency discrimination (FD) task ("FD-train group") or an intensity discrimination (ID) task ("ID-train group") during training on a set of physically identical tones that were impossible to discriminate consiste...

OBJECTIVES Despite excellent performance in speech recognition in quiet, most cochlear implant users have great difficulty with speech recognition in noise, music perception, identifying tone of voice, and discriminating different talkers. This may be partly due to the pitch coding in cochlear implant speech processing. Most current speech processing strategies use only the envelope information...

Introduction: Aging reduces the ability to understand speech in noise. Hearing rehabilitation is one of the ways to help older people communicate effectively. This study aimed to investigate the effect of vowel auditory training on the improvement of speech-in-noise (SIN) perception among elderly listeners.   Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 36 elderly ...

OBJECTIVE This study investigated factors contributing to speech perception outcomes in children with prelingual deafness after 4 to 7 yr of multichannel cochlear implant use. The analysis controlled for the effects of child, family and implant characteristics so that educational factors most conducive to maximum implant benefit could be identified. DESIGN One hundred eighty-one 8- and 9-yr-o...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to identify common factors affecting speech perception scores in children with cochlear implants. DESIGN Speech perception data for 167 implanted children were collected at two cochlear implant centres in Melbourne and Sydney. The data comprised audition-alone scores on open-set word and sentence tests. Children were selected on the basis that they ha...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to explore the self-reported consequences of profound unilateral deafness regarding communication and social interaction and to compare subjects' speech perception scores to those of normal-hearing individuals who were rendered temporarily unilaterally deaf. METHODS Cross-sectional data from 30 individuals with unilateral deafness and 30 individuals with n...