Speech Recognition in Patients with Abrupttype High-frequency Hearing Loss

Abstract

Results of speech discrimination tests in 38 patients with sensorineural hearing loss were analyzed from the view points of communication ability and cues of Japanese consonants. The audiograms of all the patients showed abrupt-type highfrequency hearing loss. The results and conclusions were as follows. 1) Recognition of Japanese consonants was highly disabled in the patients whose hearing thresholds at 1000Hz were high. 2) Cues of the voiceless consonants without /s/ distributed in the frequency range below 1000Hz. 3) Cues of the voiced obstruents and nasal consonants distributed in the frequency range above 1000Hz.