Speech Tests and Hearing Loss

For many people who suffer from hearing loss, the problem is more complex than not being able to hear sounds at certain volumes or pitches. Even when the sound of normal speech is audible, many people with hearing difficulties find it unintelligible. Since understanding speech is an important part of daily life for most people, routine hearing tests generally include a measurement of this ability.

While hearing aids are not a cure-all for loss of speech comprehension, they can greatly help people with certain conditions. To learn more about affordable hearing aids and how they could help you, call HearingPlanet's hearing aid specialists at 1-800-432-7669.

Speech Reception

Speech reception, also known as speech recognition, is the ability to recognize spoken words. Your speech reception threshold (SRT) is the lowest volume at which you can make out 50% of the words being spoken to you.

To test your speech reception, your audiologist will play a recording of someone asking you to repeat back a word. Each of these words will be two syllables long, with equal emphasis on each syllable (in literary terms, this kind of word is called a spondee). The volume of this recording will become louder or softer, until your audiologist determines the level at which you can repeat 50% of the words.

If you suffer from a low speech reception threshold, a hearing aid may help by amplifying the sounds of voices around you.

Speech Discrimination

Speech discrimination is the ability to distinguish between different words even if they sound similar. It is tested by playing lists of monosyllabic words at a volume that should be easy for you to detect. (In most cases, this is about 40 decibels above your speech recognition threshold.) Your score on this test will be the percentage of words you correctly identified from a list of 50.

Unfortunately, hearing aids cannot always help speech discrimination, since this problem may be present no matter how loud people's voices are. For some people, however, digital features such as wide dynamic range compression can be a great help.

Contact Us

HearingPlanet's hearing aid consultants work hard to help each of our clients find the assistive technology they need. For qualified assistance in your hearing aid search, contact us at 1-800-432-7669.