Facial hair as a factor in speechreading performance.

Eleven hearing-impaired subjects were tested using a speechreading test employing the CID Everyday Sentence Lists read by a male speaker under four different conditions: full beard and moustache, trimmed beard and moustache, moustache only, and clean shaven. The results indicated that varying amounts of facial hair do not have significant effects on speechreading performance. Mean scores for speechreading performance decreased somewhat with reduction of facial hair, however, as confirmed by a test of linear trend (p less than 0.05).

Dichotic listening by brain-injured adults: observation of divergent test responses.

Research on central functions presents difficult problems, including heterogeneity among normals and subjects with central nervous system (CNS) defects. General conclusions are that there is an ear advantage related to cerebral dominance; testing for results of CNS damage requires stimuli of reduced redundancy; and fusion of dichotic stimuli is a brainstem function. Responses to digits presented dichotically were obtained. Data were in agreement with the usual findings that brain injury results in a reduced ability to understand dichotic speech and that injury to the dominant cerebral hemisphere results in lower speech perception via the opposite ear than by the ipsilateral ear. Significantly almost one third of the subjects performed differently than other members of their respective subgroups. A direction for additional research is to consider factors in otherwise apparently homogeneous groups that lead to nonhomogenous responses.

A survey of hearing test rooms.

Octave-band and broad-band sound level measurements were made on 46 hearing test rooms in physicians' and audiologists' offices, hospitals, and audiology clinics. The data were evaluated against the ANSI 1977 ears open and ears covered standards for hearing test rooms. Five of the rooms met the ANSI 1977 ears open standard, and 18 met the ANSI 1977 ears covered standard. Neither dBA or dBC measurements nor difference between dBA and dBC values is a satisfactory way of specifying a room that meets a given standard. A double-wall hearing test room does not assure a test area that meets ANSI 1977 standard. Sound room ventilating fans seem to be a significant source of noise in many rooms.

Monaural vs binaural speech reception threshold and word discrimination scores in the hearing impaired.

Monaural and binaural SRT and speech discrimination scores in a sensorineural hearing-imparied sample (N: 194, aged 3--91 yrs, mn=43 yrs) indicated that while a majority of clients have neither a binaural advantage or disadvantage by these tests, an important minority (5% for SRT, 20% for discrimination) have worse binaural than better-ear scores. Binaural as well as monaural tests of SRT and of speech discrimination should be a standard part of a hearing aid evaluation.

Reliability of the TIP and DIP speech-hearing tests for children.

The reliability of SRT and speech intelligibility tests has been studied on adults. Reliability estimates for SRT are between .60 and .90, with standard error estimates from 1.5 to over five dB. For speech intelligibility tests the reliability estimates range from .50 to 90, with standard error of estimates from 2.5% to over 10%. Little has been reported on test reliability with children. For this study the TIP and DIP tests, for threshold and discrimination, respectively, were given to 295 normal and 138 hypacusic children three through twelve years of age. Subjects were retested within one week. TIP test-retest reliability was .72 for normals, and .89 to .99 for hypacusics. DIP test-retest reliability was .46 to .51 for normals and .60 to .93 for hypacusics. Standard error of estimate was about 3 dB for TIP, and 10% for DIP. These values are about the same as the reliability values for adults.