Normal Hearing

JAAA Editorial: The American Academy of Audiology Honors Committee: A Mechanism to Acknowledge Those in Audiology Who Have Gone Above and Beyond in Their Contribution to the Profession

Volume 30, Number 7,
July/August 2019
Patricia Gaffney, AuD • Chair, Academy Honors Committee
Devin L. McCaslin, PhD • Deputy Editor, Journal of the American Academy of Audiology

Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans

It’s no secret that a significant key to good health is maintaining a physically active lifestyle. But, approximately 80 percent of U.S. adults and children fall short of the recommended guidelines.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Hearing difficulty (HD) and tinnitus in the presence of normal audiometric thresholds represent a clinical challenge. So-called, hidden hearing loss (HHL) has captured significant interest from clinicians and researchers in attempts to understand factors that contribute to this phenomenon. Etiologies ranging from cochlear synaptopathy to central auditory processing deficits have been suggested. Most audiologists have come across these patients with complaints of hearing problems (particularly in noise) but normal hearing.

The Cocktail Party Effect

2016 is over, and many of us attended celebrations of remembrance of the year's transpiration and resolutions for the year to come. Civilizations around the world have been celebrating the New Year for at least four millennia, but not always in December. Learn more about the history of New Year’s Eve (NYE).

Study Finds Support for Classroom Acoustics Standards (ANSI/ASA, 2010)

A recently-published study by Frank Ingelhart evaluated the speech perception performance of 23 children with cochlear implants and 23 children with normal hearing through the speech frequencies (500-4000 Hz). Speech perception testing was completed in a classroom environment at three different reverberation times—0.9 seconds, 0.6 seconds, and 0.3 seconds.

The Importance of Frequency Regions for Cochlear Implant Patients

Sladen and Ricketts (2015) report that given current cochlear implant (CI) technology, the majority of post-lingually deafened adults achieve 80 percent word recognition (in quiet) after only six months experience with a CI. In their study, CI users were presented with monaural information and the NH listeners had binaural input. The noisy condition was a 10 dB SNR with six-talker babble. Of note, “the average decrease in performance between quiet and noisy conditions was 13% for the NH group and 20 percent for the CI group.”

Temporal Processing Deficits

Helfer and Vargo (2009) noted that, "It is tantalizing to consider that temporal processing may be an underlying cause of problems understanding speech in competing speech." More recently, Fullgrabe et al (2015) investigated the impact of aging with regard to the ability of people with normal audiograms to understand speech, and they sought to determine the impact of cognition and auditory temporal processing on speech understanding.

Cochlear Implants, Normal Hearing, and Single-Sided Deafness

Many reports in the literature have demonstrated that cochlear implants are a reasonable, successful, and viable option for people with severe-to-profound unilateral hearing loss (Arndt et al 2011; Baguley, 2010; Buechner et al 2010; Popelka et al 2010; Van Zon et al 2015; Van De Heyning et al 2008).

Cochlear Implants and Music Perception: 2015

Wang, Zhou, and Xu (2011) evaluated 19 adult cochlear implant (CI) uses with regard to pitch perception. They reported that normal hearing listeners could identify changes in pitch of 0.4 semitones (the difference in two neighboring keys on a piano is one semitone). However, on average, people with CIs required 5.5 semitones (i.e., 5.5 keys white keys on a piano) to notice a change in pitch. Of note, the range of performance for the CI group was from 0.8 semitones to 19.6 semitones.

Issues in Invisible Hearing Loss

Beck (2015) reported that when a patient presents with normal (or abnormal) pure-tone thresholds and their chief complaint is the inability to understand speech clearly in quiet or noise, a thorough diagnostic battery is called for. “The goal is not to simply document peripheral hearing loss, rather, the goal is to diagnose or describe the auditory-based communication disorder (i.e., a communication disorder manifested via audition).” He notes that a simple audiogram cannot document, estimate, reflect, or quantify speech-in-noise problems, neural or auditory processing difficulties, percei