The Relationship between the Acceptance of Noise and Acoustic Environments in Young Adults with Normal Hearing: A Pilot Study

Purpose Tolerance for background noise when listening to speech has been found to vary greatly between individuals, despite clinically similar audiograms. Recent work suggests that listeners at risk for noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) self-report greater annoyance of background sounds compared with listeners at lower risk for NIHL. To date, the relationship between noise exposure levels and background noise tolerance has not been studied using objective noise exposure level measurements and quantitative (i.e., not questionnaire-based) background noise tolerance measures. Method Acceptable Noise Level (ANL; Nabelek, Tucker, & Letowski, 1991 ) scores and week-long noise dosimetry measurements were obtained for 56 normal-hearing college students, 22 of whom were routinely exposed to levels of noise that exceed recommended exposure limits (higher risk). The remaining 34 participants did not exceed recommended exposure limits (lower risk). Results The lower risk group's average daily noise dose was 26%, whereas the higher risk group accrued an average daily noise dose of 461%. The lower risk group was found to be more tolerant of background noise than the higher risk group, with mean ANL scores of 3.1 dB and 5.4 dB signal-to-noise ratio, respectively. A small but statistically significant relationship between ANL and noise dose was found, indicating that higher levels of noise exposure were associated with lower background noise tolerance. Conclusions Results suggest that young adults at higher risk for NIHL based on objective noise exposure data have a slightly lower tolerance for background noise when listening to speech. These findings open avenues for future work on background noise tolerance in more diverse noise-exposed populations.

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Hypoactivation of the central auditory system in listeners who are hypertolerant of background noise

Skoe,

Powell

2024

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Listeners exhibit varying levels of tolerance for background noise during speech communication. It has been proposed that low tolerance of background noise may be the consequence of abnormally amplified gain in the central auditory system (CAS). Here, using a dataset of young adults with normal hearing thresholds, we asked whether central gain mechanisms might also explain cases of hyper tolerance of background noise, as well as cases of reduced, but not abnormal, tolerance. We used the auditory brainstem response to derive a measure of CAS gain (Wave V/Wave I ratio) to compare listeners' background noise tolerance while listening to speech, grouping them into three categories: hyper, high, and medium tolerance. We found that hyper tolerant listeners had reduced CAS gain than those with high tolerance. This effect was driven by Wave V not Wave I. In addition, the medium tolerant listeners trended towards having reduced Wave I and reduced Wave V amplitudes and generally higher levels of exposure to loud sound, suggestive of the early stages of noise-compromised peripheral function without an apparent compensatory increase in central gain. Our results provide physiologic evidence that (1) reduced CAS gain may account for hyper tolerance of background noise but that (2) increased CAS gain is not a pre-requisite for medium tolerance of background noise.

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The Relationship between the Acceptance of Noise and Acoustic Environments in Young Adults with Normal Hearing: A Pilot Study

Cited by 3 publications

References 19 publications

Evidence of noise-induced subclinical hearing loss using auditory brainstem responses and objective measures of noise exposure in humans

Evidence of noise-induced subclinical hearing loss using auditory brainstem responses and objective measures of noise exposure in humans

Noise Exposure and Background Noise Tolerance in Listeners With Normal Audiograms

Hypoactivation of the central auditory system in listeners who are hypertolerant of background noise

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