Re: standards of speech intelligibilty for the hearing impaired?

["Ward R. Drennan" <drennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sure, the audiogram (ie audibility) is the primary predictor of speech intelligibility, but don't you think the additional factors could improve predictability of practical tasks such as speech intelligibility in noise and babble backgrounds?


On Thu, 21 Feb 2008, Christine Rankovic wrote:

> Dear Dick, Chuping, and auditory.org list:
>
>
>
> Thank you (Dick) for your summary of Brian Moore's talk. I wasn't present, but I am familiar with Brian's ideas on this topic.
>
>
>
> Contrary to Brian's assertion that the audiogram isn't enough, I have had considerable success predicting speech intelligibility scores for hearing-impaired listeners using just the audiogram.  I use Harvey Fletcher's full-blown Articulation Index [H. Fletcher and R.H. Galt (1950), J. Acous. Soc. Am. 22, 89-151].  To use the AI, I model the hearing loss as noise, and calculate expected masking spread for any external noise, and then plug these into an otherwise unaltered Fletcher calculation.



Ward R. Drennan, Ph. D.
VM Bloedel Hearing Research Center
Department of Otolaryngology
University of Washington Box 357923
Seattle, WA 98195
Office: (206) 897-1848
Fax: (206) 616-1828