What is Speech Perception

This chapter aimed to estimate speech perception benefits in quiet for clients with different degrees of hearing loss. The difference between aided and unaided scores on a monosyllabic word test presented binaurally was used as the measure of benefit. Retrospective data for 492 hearing aid users with four-frequency pure-tone average hearing losses (PTA) ranging from 5 dB HL to 76 dB HL in the better ear were analyzed using nonlinear regression. The mean benefit for the perception of monosyllabic words in this group of clients was 22.3% and the maximum expected benefit was 33.6% for a PTA of 52 dB HL. The expected benefit can be expressed as a reduction of the error rate by about half for isolated words and about one quarter for sentences across the full range of PTA.