Résumé
Objective The aim of this study is to study the musical ability,auditory ability and speech intelli-gibility and their relationship in children with artificial hearing devices,and to provide clinical evidence for the hear-ing and speech rehabilitation for children with hearing loss.Methods A total of 27 children (14 boys and 13 girls) with prelingual sensorineural hearing loss from Zibo participated in this study.Their hearing levels were from mod-erate to profound.Their chronological ages at evaluation ranged from 9 to 95 months with a mean of 42 months. Their chronological ages at intervention ranged from 1 to 72 months with a mean of 26 months.Their hearing ages at evaluation ranged from 1 to 60 months with a mean of 16 months.They all wore bilateral aids.Musical Ears, CAP and SIR were used to evaluate their musical ability,auditory ability and speech intelligibility,respectively.A linear and regression analysis was done in the statistic procedure.Results The means and standard deviations of the scores of musical ability,auditory ability,and speech intelligibility were 27.1±16.7,4.4±1.9,2.8±1.4,respec-tively.The scores of musical ability and auditory ability were significantly correlated (r= 0.856,P<0.001).The scores of musical ability and speech intelligibility were also significantly related (r= 0.827,P<0.001).Conclusion The musical ability is closely related to auditory ability in children with bilateral aided hearing.The musical ability is also closely related to speech ability for this group of children.
Résumé
Objective To investigate the effects of nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC) on sound quality perception by the Mandarin-speaking subjects with high-frequency hearing loss.Methods Twenty-three listeners with sensorineural hearing loss with no previous experiences of using hearing aids participated in this study.They were all fitted binaurally with Phonak Bolero Q hearing aids.The stimuli,including male voice,female voice,bird chirping,music,and self-voice,were presented in a random order with a custom software via a loudspeaker at 65 dB SPL.Regarding NLFC parameters,cut-off frequency (CF) ranged from 4.9 to 6 kHz and compression ratio (CR) was programed as 1.5.Subjects evaluated the sound quality of the stimulus in loudness,clearness,naturalness and overall preference under the conditions of NLFC-on and NLFC-off.A paired-sample t-test was conducted to assess the group differences in sound quality rating between NLFC on and off conditions.Results Paired test showed significant difference of high-frequency hearing threshold under the condition of NLFC-on and NLFC-off at 6 and 8 kHz(P＞0.05).No significant statistical difference was found in subjects' sound quality ratings between NLFC-on and NLFC-off conditions (all P＞0.05).Conclusion NLFC technology resulted in no significant impact on sound quality perception for the non-experienced hearing aid users.