Auditory and Vestibular Research Journal
Year:2016 | Volume:25 | Issue:4|Papers Count:8

Background and Aim: different tests have been developed to evaluate reduced ability of speech perception in noise, and the words-in-noise test is one of the easiest ones in terms of speech materials. This study aimed to develop and determine the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the words-in-noise (WIN) test for 7 to 12-year-old children.Methods: This research is a tool-making, non-empirical study including three main stages: first, development of the Persian version of the WIN test (including 2 lists each one designed at each of 7 different signal to noise ratios), second, the assessment of its content validity, and third, its administration on sixty three 7-to 12-year-old normal hearing children (36 boys and 27 girls) with a mean age of 9.32 (SD=1.66) years old, in order to assess the reliability of the test (list equivalency). Participants were selec-ted from the students of primary schools in Tehran.Results: The content validity ratio for each item was above 0.62. List 1 and 2 of the WIN test were highly correlated (p<0.05). The test-retest correlations were statistically significant for both lists (p<0.05). There was no significant difference between the scores of the left and right ears and gender (p>0.05). The Mean of speech in noise ratio (SNR) 50% for each list was also determined.Conclusion: Based on the study results, it is concluded that the Persian version of the WIN test has acceptable content validity and relia-bility and can be used in clinical and research studies.

Background and Aim: Autobiography is a kind of narrative writing about a person written by that same person. Indeed, it is a type of writing about self that is full of subjectivity and experience. The present study investigated the effect of autobiography method on the compre-hension skill of hearing-impaired students.Methods: International Standardized Reading Literacy Questions (2001) was employed for data collection. Six hearing-impaired students from special female schools of Shahriar city, Iran, in the range of severe to profound hearing impairment were selected as control (n=3) and experimental (n=3) groups. Autobiography met-hod was used for the experimental group during 23 sessions of hearing rehabilitation training.Results: In the experimental group, mean score of posttest was significantly higher than that of the pretest in levels one and two of compre-hension process (p<0.05), while there was no significant difference in levels three and four between the pre and posttests (p>0.05). In the control group, there was no significant diffe-rence between post and pretests in all the four levels (p>0.05).Conclusion: Autobiography as a teaching meth-od focuses on the lived experiences of the indi-vidual. In so doing, students' experiences are discovered, expressed, and interpreted, and stu-dents are committed to improving their writing skill through achieving a broader set of langu-age functions. Furthermore, boosting language skills can improve comprehension in hearing-impaired students.

Background and Aim: The hearing loss and acoustic feedback signal in the binaural hearing aids may annoy users, make speech reorgani-zation difficult, and affect the sound quality. This paper presents a new method for acoustic feedback suppression in binaural hearing aids, based on the combination of binaural informa-tion and blind source separation. This method can enhance sound from the specific direction of the user and cancels acoustic feedback signal so that the user can hear clearly.Methods: In the proposed method, the binaural information (interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs)) was generated using computational auditory scene analysis (CASA). In addition, we used underde-termined blind source separation (BSS) for the automatic classification of the time-frequency (T-F) units of the speech mixture spectrogram. The system performance was evaluated using 32 acoustic English speech mixtures. The sound quality was assessed using 19 normal-hearing listeners of both genders.Results: The system achieved a good acoustic feedback suppression performance by giving a higher signal to noise ratio and 18.07 dB on average for the signal-to-feedback ratio. In addition, the sound after processing had a high quality according to the subjective assessment.Conclusion: Our system allowed the user to increase the gain of the hearing aid without affecting the sound quality.

Background and Aim: Some risk factors for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) such as upper respiratory airways abnormalities and obesity overlap with the risk factors for Eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD). In this study, we investiga-ted the prevalence of ETD in a population of patients with OSA.Methods: Tubal dysfunction was determined by tympanometry and inflation-deflation test in 36 patients diagnosed with severe OSA and 20 nor-mal participants.Results: More than 80% of patients with OSA had concomitant ETD at least in one ear. Obese participants had a smaller tympanometric peak pressure (TPP) shift after inflation-deflation test than non-obese subjects. There was no signify-cant correlation between TPP shift and duration of OSA.Conclusion: High prevalence of concomitant ETD was determined in patients with severe OSA and obese individuals. Tubal function tes-tis suggested in patients referred for OSA evalu-ation.

Background and Aim: It will be discussed about five mechanisms in relation to speech in noise perception; including neural encoding and decoding, centrifugal pathways, pitch percep-tion, asymmetric sampling in time and cognitive skills. These mechanisms are related to each other and each is important to recognize speech in noise. In this article, we have tried to rely on the latest studies to describe the mechanisms as mentioned. In the end, we will refer to word in noise training.Methods: In this review study, the articles rela-ted to speech perception in noise published in Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus and Springer database, were collected and investigated. Key-words include speech in noise and related words.Conclusion: It can be concluded that mentioned mechanisms have a considerable effect on spee-ch in noise perception. It should be noticed that word in noise training cause these mechanisms to improve by covering some of them.

Background and Aim: There is a controversy about cochlear implant usefulness for users since they do not develop speech and language with equal quality. Many researchers by contro-lling demographic and medical variables in this population suggested the contribution of neuro-cognitive factors such as working memory to this variation. The aim of this study was to com-pare working memory capacity between two groups of cochlear implantees who differ just in terms of speech in noise (SIN) scores.Methods: In this study, 26 cochlear implanted children, aged 8-12 years who had received cochlear implant (CI) before age 3, took part and were divided into two groups of more than 75% and less than 60% based on their SIN sco-res. Both groups were matched for their medical and demographic characteristics, and underwent forward, backward digit span, and non-word repetition tests.Results: There were significant differences in the scores of all three tests between the two gro-ups (p<0.001). The scores of speech perception in noise test were positively correlated with those of working memory tests.Conclusion: The difference in working memory capacity between the two groups, and positive correlation between working memory capacity and SIN scores indicated the importance of wor-king memory capacity in the ability of speech perception in noise in CI children. Thus, atten-tion to working memory capacity in cochlear implant users seems important in planning for rehabilitation programs.

Background and Aim: Social networking sites (SNSs), known in terms of cyberspace, are a very popular and accepted aspect of technology. Internet is more useful for hearing-impaired children and adolescents than the other users because of the type of communication and its possibility of hiding their disabilities. This study aimed to determine the relationship between using cyberspace and the motivation of hearing impaired adolescents and their feeling of loneliness.Methods: Eighty five hearing impaired students with age range of 12-23 and mean age of 16.28±2.35 years took part in this study. All students were selected from special schools in Tehran city. Dehshiri loneliness scale and the questionnaire of characteristics of hearing impa-ired users of Social Networking Sites were used to collect data.Results: The results showed that despite infer-quent use of cyberspace for learning among hearing-impaired students, there was no rela-tionship between motivation of using cyber-space and feeling of loneliness. Also, no correlation was found between feeling of loneliness and their activities in cyberspace exc-ept for chatting with other hearing impaired individuals (p>0.05). In other words, chatting with hearing impaired individuals had a positive significant correlation with feeling of loneliness (p=0.020).Conclusion: Based on the obtained results, hearing-impaired individuals normally chat with their hearing-impaired peers when they feel lonely. Also, it was found that the use of cyber-space for learning is rare in hearing-impaired students. Thus, it is necessary for teachers and experts to provide appropriate facilities and use-ful internet use for these students.

Background and Aim: Electrical discharges in temporal lobe epilepsy can cause disorders in auditory pathways. Staggered spondaic word test (SSW) is one of the most common behavi-oral tests to evaluate the central auditory ner-vous system. This study aimed to evaluate and compare auditory processing problems in tem-poral lobe epileptic patients and normal subjects with Persian SSW test.Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study was conducted on 25 patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy aged 18-46 years and 25 controls aged 18-42 years using SSW test. Corrected spondaic word test (C-SSW) was compared between groups.Results: Significant differences were found in the mean scores of right non-competitive, left non-competitive, right competitive, left compe-titive, right ear, and left ear between groups (p<0.05) and there was poor direct relationship between duration of epilepsy and the total score (r=0.38, p=0.04). There were significant corre-lations between temporal lobe epilepsy and ear effect, order effect, and reversals (p<0.05).Conclusion: This study revealed a high preva-lence of central auditory processing disorders in patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy that is increased with increasing duration of disorder of temporal lobe epilepsy.