DISTURBED SPEECH-INTELLIGIBILITY IN NOISE DESPITE A NORMAL AUDIOGRAM - A DEFECT IN TEMPORAL RESOLUTION

Patients with complaints of disturbed speech intelligibility in noise, despite normal standard audiograms, constitute a unique yet not uncom mon population of listeners. The literature on this patient group is r eviewed, and the term Idiopathic Discriminatory Dysfunction (IDD) is i ntroduced in an attempt to standardize and qualify the distinct charac teristics of this entity. Preliminary studies of these patients have h ypothesized both frequency and temporal resolution deficits underlying this impairment. A representative group of 15 patients suffering from IDD were tested using a new speech-in-noise paradigm designed to test temporal resolution. These patients were found to have near-normal te mporal resolving capacity as determined by this task.