Exam 1 Flashcards
What is aural rehabilitation?
Services and procedures for facilitating receptive and expressive communication in individuals with hearing impairment.
What does aural rehab remediation consist of?
Fitting and monitoring hearing aids or cochlear implants, counseling and referral, intervention to facilitate expressive and receptive communication.
What are the three kinds of decibel measurements used in hearing science?
dB SPL, dB HL, and dB SL
What is 0 dB HL at any frequency?
The mean hearing average threshold for young adults
What is the reference for dB SL?
The individual’s actual threshold.
When is dB SL usually used?
When indicating the level of a stimulus, such as a tone or speech stimulus.
dB HL of stimulus - dB HL of the individual’s threhold =
dB SL
What is 0-15 dB HL?
Normal hearing
What is 16 -40 dB HL?
Mild HL.
What is 41-55 dB HL?
Moderate HL
What is 56-70 dB HL?
Moderately severe HL
What is 71-90 dB HL?
Severe HL
What is 90+ HL?
Profound HL
In which cases is there excellent segmental discrimination with hearing aids?
Mild to Moderate HL
In which cases is there difficult or non-existent segmental discrimination?
Severe to Profound HL
What is segmental discrimination?
The ability to discriminate between different speech sounds
What kind of hearing loss affects the middle or outer ear and the lower frequencies?
Conductive
What type of hearing loss affects the inner ear and decreases hearing sensitivity and frequency and temporal resolution?
Sensorineural
What is frequency resolution?
The ability to hear one tone in the presence of another.
What type of hearing loss involves a tumor of the eighth nerve?
Retrocochlear
What is adventitious hearing loss?
A loss that occurs after language acquisition has already taken place
What ages are pre-lingual?
0-5
What is the physical deficit associated with a loss of hearing as expressed in pure tone thresholds, SRTs, etc.?
A hearing impairment
What is the degree to which a hearing loss affects an individuals ability to function socially, academically or vocationally?
A hearing handicap
What factors affect the degree of handicap?
Age of onset, severity of hearing loss, site of lesion, and family/social support
What is the average long term intensity of speech?
65 dB SPL or 50 dB HL
What is the range of variation from a loud whisper to a shout?
30 dB SPL to 75 dB SPL
What is the sound with the greatest intensity?
O in ought
What sound has the least intensity?
Voiceless th
What is the duration of consonants?
20-150 ms
What is the duration of vowels?
130-360 ms
What is speech characterized by?
Very rapid intensity variations
What is the long-term average frequency spectrum of speech?
100 Hz to 8000 Hz
Where is the energy concentrated in the long-term frequency of speech?
100 Hz to 800 Hz range
Why is energy concentrated in the lower frequencies?
Due to the fundamental frequency and the energy in the lower vowel formants
Where is much of the energy located consonants?
In the higher frequencies.
What are the characteristics of vowels?
Relatively high in intensity with energy concentrated in the lower frequencies, carry relatively little information, can mask consonants.
What are the characteristics of consonants?
Relatively low in intensity with energy concentrated in the higher frequencies, carry most of the information.
Where do most sensorineural losses tend to be greatest?
In the higher frequencies (sloping audiogram)
Why do the hearing impaired have difficulty with speech perception?
Because they have greater difficulty with consonants, which carry most of the information in speech.
Which frequency is there an equal amount of speech information above and below?
1600 Hz
What frequencies does ambient noise tend to consist of?
Lower frequencies
What does noise mask in speech?
The lower frequency information
Why can normal hearing individuals still achieve almost 100% speech recognition when noise is present?
Because noise only masks the lower part of the speech spectrum, and normal hearing individuals can still access the upper half.
How does noise affect the hearing impaired?
Masks the information in the lower part of the speech spectrum, and the hearing loss impairs perception of the information in the upper part.
What are the major impediments to speech recognition?
Ambient Noise and reverberation
What is reverberation?
The continuation of sound energy in a room after the sound source has stopped vibrating, happens when sound waves are reflected off surfaces and the reflected energy is added to the original sound wave.
What is reverberation time?
The time in seconds for the SPL of a signal to decrease by 60 dB from a steady state once the signal source is terminated
How is speech intelligibility related to reverb time?
Inversely
What is the extent of phonological, syntactic, and lexical knowledge?
Linguistic knowledge
What is the intensity level at which the presence of a speech signal can just be detected?
Speech awareness/detection threshold (SAT/SDT)
What is the intensity at which 50% of speech stimuli can be correctly identified?
Speech recognition threshold (SRT)
What is the best indicator of auditory communication ability of an individual?
Suprathreshold testing/discrimination testing
Why are the hearing impaired tested?
To estimate degree of communication difficulty, assess effects of amplification, and for the basis for design of auditory and speech/language training program
What two types of speech perception information need to be obtained?
Degree of speech perception impairment, and degree of communication handicap/linguistic competence
What does the degree of speech perception impairment refer to?
How much of the speech signal can be recognized by a hearing impaired individual
How is the speech perception impairment tested?
Using only acoustic information (modified rhyme test)
How is the speech handicap tested?
Using acoustic information and linguistic context (everyday sentences)
Why is a recording a better method of presentation than a live voice?
Because it is always the same.
What presentation level in (dB HL) should be used when testing speech perception impairment?
An optimal level. For mild hearing loss SRT +30 dB. For moderately severe and above use common sense, because 80-85 dB HL will feel loud.
What presentation level in (dB HL) should be used when testing speech handicap?
An estimate
What should be taken into consideration when testing children?
Make sure the child is familiar with the vocabulary in the materials, make sure the response mode is appropriate
At what age will most children be able to respond in a speech test?
2
What is the Ling 6?
A sound test of m u a i sh s low frequency to high frequency sounds, which can show what freqs are most affected by the hearing loss
What is the NU - Chips?
50 word lists - monosyllables: used around 3 years old
What is the pediatric speech intelligibility test? (PSI)
A test that uses monosyllables and sentences to give you flexibility to test both speech recognition and speech handicap.
What age range is the WIPI used for?
4-6
What does WIPI stand for?
Word intelligibility by picture identification.
What is the PBK-50?
Phonetically balanced kindergarten used at about 5 years
How is language assessment performed in severe to profound HL children?
Present auditory alone, present visually alone, then present with both modalities
What test is used for those whom conventional tests are too challenging?
The minimum auditory capabilities battery.
What is the great advantage of the TAC?
It has been normed according to categories of hearing loss.
