The influence of central auditory processing on the intelligibility of the speech in the patients presenting with hearing impairment

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to evaluate to what degree the function of the central auditory pathways influences the intelligibility of the speech in the patients suffering from the sensorineural loss of hearing (SNLH). The study included a total of 20 patients at the age varying from 31 to 80 years presenting with moderate to moderately severe symmetrical SNLN. All the patients were permanent hearing aid users. They underwent the standard audiological examination including pure-tone threshold and suprathreshold audimetries together with impedancemetry, the evaluation of the functional ability of the central auditory pathways with special reference to temporal resolution and differential frequency sensitivity, binaural integration, and the ability to distinguish a sound stimulus against the background noise. It has been found that the impaired intelligibility of the speech and the decreased efficiency of the hearing aids in the patients presenting with SNLH were attributable to the central auditory pathway disorders detected in 50% of the participants in the study. The strong correlation between the results of detection of the stimulus under conditions of tonal signal interference, the binaural integration test, and intelligibility of the speech in the users of hearing aids was documented.