Difficulties Understanding Compressed Speech in Elderly Listeners With Mild-to-Moderate Hearing Loss

Objective In this work we evaluated the difficulties in understanding rapid speech (normal, fast and very fast rates) in elderly listeners with and without hearing loss (presbycusis and moderate hearing loss). Rapid speech is common in daily communication, yet few studies have been conducted to assess this problem in Spanish-speaking listeners, as has been done for English speakers. Material and method We compared the recognition of sentences presented at normal, fast, and very fast speech rates in 3 groups of listeners. Recognition scores were correlated to their audiological measures and the score obtained on a Communication Difficulties Questionnaire. Results Compressed sentences were more poorly perceived in the 2 groups of listeners with hearing loss, compared to the normal group. Moreover, we obtained significant correlations among the 3 measures recognition of rapid speech, the audiological measures, and the score in the Questionnaire. Conclusions Our results suggest that rapid-speech recognition skills deteriorate in the presence of hearing loss, whether due to presbycusis or other moderate hearing loss in all frequency ranges.