Auditory Recognition of Words-in-Noise in Normal Hearing and Mild-to-Severe Sensorineural Hearing Loss with Different Configurations

Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SNHL) reduces audibility and causes distortion, which result in difficulty with speech processing, especially in noisy environments. One of the new speech-in-noise tests is the Words-in-Noise (WIN) test. This study aimed to further investigate the Signal-to-Noise Ratio 50% (SNR-50) in subjects with mild to severe SNHL and different configurations using the Persian version of the WIN test compared to normal-hearing people.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 54 patients with SNHL aged 17– 75 years and 49 normal-hearing people aged 20–48 years. The auditory recognition in the presence of multi-talker babble noise was evaluated by the Persian version of the WIN test (named ARWIN).

The mean SNR-50 in the normal-hearing group was 2.56±1.2 dB, which increased significantly in subgroups with mild (10.13±4.8 dB), moderate (14.51±4.7 dB) and moderate-to-severe (16.61±4.3 dB) SNHL (p<0.001).

People with SNHL need more SNR by nearly 4–6 times than the normalhearing group for recognition of monosyllabic Persian words in the presence of multi-talker babble noise.