Auditory Comprehension in School-Aged Children With Normal Hearing and With Unilateral Hearing Loss

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to measure auditory comprehension performance in school-aged children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) and with normal hearing (NH) in quiet and in the presence of child-produced two-talker babble (TTB). Method Listeners were school-aged children (7–12 years) with permanent UHL ( n = 25) or NH ( n = 14). Comprehension of three short stories taken from the Test of Narrative Language ( Gillam & Pearson, 2004 ) was measured in quiet and in the presence of TTB at two signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs): (a) +6 dB and (b) the individualized SNR required to achieve 50% sentence understanding in the presence of the same TTB masker in a prior study ( Griffin, Poissant, & Freyman, 2019 ). Target/masker spatial configuration was 0°/±60° azimuth. Results As a group, subjects with UHL demonstrated auditory comprehension abilities in favorable listening environments (i.e., quiet, +6 dB SNR) that were statistically equivalent to the NH group. However, in the most challenging listening condition (individualized SNR), many subjects with UHL demonstrated poorer comprehension performance than their age-matched peers with NH. Comprehension abilities were not associated with degree of UHL, unaided speech intelligibility index at 65 dB SPL in the impaired ear, side of UHL, or sex. Conclusions As a group, children with UHL demonstrated deficits in auditory comprehension compared to age-matched peers with NH in challenging listening environments. Findings highlight the importance of ensuring good SNRs for children with UHL.

The use of remote microphone systems in unilateral hearing loss: a preliminary study among Brazilian children and teenagers

“…This investigation was carried out with 11 children, because it is a study that requires periodic returns to the clinic, control of the use of devices and availability of equipment. Thus, the sample number is small, similar to international surveys conducted with children with UHL 3 , 6 , 30 , 33 . We highlight that no previous studies on UHL have similar methodology and literature on this subject is limited 8 …”

“…Children with hearing loss are increasingly likely to attend regular classrooms due to early identification/intervention and better access to auditory information. Griffin 33 (2015) points out that academic difficulties and failures in the UHL population are more generalized than initially thought; thus, intervention may provide more favorable results for school performance 8 …”

Delayed lexical access and cascading effects on semantic activation during spoken word recognition in children with hearing aids and cochlear implants: Evidence from eye-tracking

“…In everyday listening situations, listeners must access word meaning quickly, or risk falling behind in terms of understanding what is being said (Nation, 2014). Children with as little as minimal HL show deficits in discourse comprehension, even when they are highly accurate at repeating back spoken sentences (Griffin et al, 2020;Lewis et al, 2015). It is possible that the relatively small delay in semantic activation at the single-word level builds up during connected speech, as words are uttered sequentially.…”

“…Due to their degraded and often inconsistent access to speech signals, children with any degree of HL are at risk for problems developing spoken language and listening skills (e.g., Tomblin et al, 2015), especially in higher-level language. Many school-age children with HL perform within the normative range on standardized measures of vocabulary and grammar (Halliday et al, 2017;Klein et al, 2017;Lund, 2016;Nittrouer et al, 2020;Nittrouer et al, 2018;Wie et al, 2020), yet they lag behind their normal-hearing (NH) peers on more complex tasks like understanding sequential directions, ambiguous sentences, or multisentence stories (Griffin et al, 2020;Lewis et al, 2015;Walker et al, 2020), and recognizing malapropisms . These complex aspects of spoken language are likely to be crucial for classroom success .…”

Evidence-Based Practices and Outcomes for Children with Mild and Unilateral Hearing Loss

“…These findings are of particular importance to speechlanguage pathologists who may be assessing and providing intervention in the schools. Griffin, Poissant, and Freyman (2020) provide original research about how unilateral hearing loss negatively impacts listening comprehension skills in background noise. Al-Salim, Moeller, and McGregor (2020) report on both children with mild hearing loss and with unilateral hearing loss, focusing on short-term phonological working memory.…”