The minimum speech test battery in profound unilateral hearing loss

Objective: Individuals with monaural hearing experience disadvantages compa red with normal hearing counterparts because of the loss of the head shadow effect, the squelch effect, and binaural summation. In this study the Mini mum Speech Test Battery (MSTB), a battery designed to document word recogni tion in bilaterally hearing impaired cochlear implant candidates, was admin istered to unilaterally hearing-impaired and normal hearing subjects to stu dy its possible use in measuring hearing difficulty in monaural subjects. Study Design: Repeated measures design with the MSTB administered in sound- field in a sound-isolated booth in I) quiet; 2) speech toward good ear, noi se (+10 dB S/N) toward impaired earl 3) speech toward impaired ear, noise t oward good ear; and 4) bilateral speech and noise. Setting: Academic otologic practice. Patients: Ten adults with normal hearing and 10 adults with normal or near- normal hearing in one ear and profound hearing loss in the contralateral ea r. Main Outcome Measures: The MSTB, composed of the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonan t (CNC) test and the Hearing In Noise Test (HINT). Results: As expected, performance differences between the groups were not f ound in quiet conditions. Analysis of variance and regression analysis conf irmed that the impaired group performed significantly worse than control su bjects on HINT testing when noise was directed toward the good ear. Analysi s of variance and regression analysis confirmed that the impaired group per formed significantly worse than control subjects on CNC testing when noise was directed toward the good ear and in bilateral noise. Conclusions: The MSTB may be useful in measuring the hearing difficulty of patients with monaural hearing.