J Audiol Otol.  2019 Oct;23(4):197-203. 10.7874/jao.2019.00143.

Speech Perception and Gap Detection Performance of Single-Sided Deafness under Noisy Conditions

• Kwak C
• Kim S
• Lee J
• Seo Y
• Kong T
• Han W

• KMID: 2460021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.7874/jao.2019.00143

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Many studies have reported no benefit of sound localization, but improved speech understanding in noise after treating patients with single-sided deafness (SSD). Furthermore, their performances provided a large individual difference. The present study aimed to measure the ability of speech perception and gap detection in noise for the SSD patients to better understand their hearing nature.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS
Nine SSD patients with different onset and period of hearing deprivation and 20 young adults with normal hearing and simulated conductive hearing loss as the control groups conducted speech perception in noise (SPIN) and Gap-In-Noise (GIN) tests. The SPIN test asked how many presented sentences were understood at the +5 and -5 dB signal-to-noise ratio. The GIN test was asked to find the shortest gap in white noise with different lengths in the gap.
RESULTS
Compared to the groups with normal hearing and simulated instant hearing loss, the SSD group showed much poor performance in both SPIN and GIN tests while supporting central auditory plasticity of the SSD patients. Rather than a longer period of deafness, the large individual variance indicated that the congenital SSD patients showed better performance than the acquired SSD patients in two measurements.
CONCLUSIONS
The results suggested that comprehensive assessments should be implemented before any treatment of the SSD patient considering their onset time and etiology, although these findings need to be generalized with a large sample size.

Keyword

Single-sided deafness; Simulated conducted hearing loss; Speech perception in noise; Gap-In-Noise

MeSH Terms

Deafness*
Hearing
Hearing Loss
Hearing Loss, Conductive
Humans
Individuality
Noise
Plastics
Sample Size
Signal-To-Noise Ratio
Silver Sulfadiazine
Sound Localization
Speech Perception*
Young Adult
Plastics
Silver Sulfadiazine