Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

609

Date

2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Comm Sciences and Disorders

Concentration

Hearing Sciences & Disorders

Committee Chair

Robyn Cox

Committee Member

David Wark

Committee Member

Lisa Lucks Mendel

Committee Member

Corinna Ethington

Abstract

Difference in speech recognition performance with short and long release time processing has been noted in previous research. Recent research has established a connection between hearing aid users' cognitive abilities and release time. Researchers hope to use cognitive ability as a predictor of release time selection. The results from these previous studies have been contradictory. Some researchers hypothesized that linguistic context of speech recognition test materials was one of the factors that accounted for the inconsistency. The goal of the present study was to examine the relationship between hearing aid users' cognitive abilities and their aided speech recognition performance with short and long release time using speech recognition tests with different amounts of linguistic context. Thirty-four experienced hearing aid users participated in the present study. Their cognitive abilities were quantified using a reading span test. Digital behind-the-ear style hearing aids with adjustable release time settings were bilaterally fitted to the participants. Their aided speech recognition performance was evaluated using three tests with different amounts of linguistic context: the Word-In-Noise (WIN) test, the American Four Alternative Auditory Feature (AFAAF) test, and the Bamford-Kowal_Bench Speech-In-Noise (BKB-SIN) test. The present study replicated the results of an earlier study using an equivalent speech recognition test. The results from the present study also showed that hearing aid users with high cognitive abilities performed better on the AFAAF and the BKB-SIN compared to those with low cognitive abilities when using short release time processing. Results showed that none of the speech recognition tests produced significantly different performance between the short and the long release times for either cognitive group. This finding did not support the hypothesis of the effect of linguistic context on aided speech recognition performance with different release time settings. Results from the present study suggest that cognitive ability might not be important in prescribing release time.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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