Audiology and Deaf Studies

Biography

Biography: Hua Ou

Abstract

The Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) has received substantial attention due to its potential to predict hearing-aid use success. It is a subjective measure of patients’ willingness to tolerate noise, while listening to speech at the most comfortable level. Previous research suggests no relationship between ANLs and objective speech recognition performance in noise for hearing-impaired listeners. However, the relationship between self-rated speech intelligibility and ANL is unknown.

Forty-six hearing-impaired listeners and twenty normal-hearing listeners participated in the study. The ANLs were measured by Quick Speech-in-Noise (QuickSIN) test sentences in a four-talker babble. The self-rated speech intelligibility and the objective speech recognition performance were both measured, using the same test format and materials from the QuickSIN protocol. The differences between the rating of intelligibility and objective measures reflect how accurately listeners can judge their ability to listen in noise. Pearson correlation was used for the data analysis. The data revealed a significantly moderate correlation (r = 0.6, p < .0001) between ANLs and self-rated speech intelligibility for hearing-impaired listeners and a weak but significant correlation of 0.4 for the normal-hearing listeners (p = .04). No relationship was found between ANLs and the discrepancy of objective and subjective speech recognition performance for either group. The results indicated that listeners who rated themselves as highly able to listen to speech in noise were better able to tolerate noise than those who rated themselves as less able to listen in noise.