Susan L. Phillips, Ph.D., CCC-A

Assistant Professor of Audiology

Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders
University of North Carolina Greensboro

Speech Perception/Psychoacoustics

NIDCD funded R03 project: Spectral Cue Use in Older Listeners with Poor Speech Perception

Background: Among those older listeners who have a hearing loss, most have good speech perception once the issue of audibility is addressed via amplification. However, there is a subgroup of older listeners with hearing loss who have an inordinate amount of difficulty understanding even amplified speech.

My previous research indicated that these listeners have significantly more difficulty with spectral resolution if the signal is complex. Performance on the NST suggested that these listeners might have difficulty with voiced and initial consonants in addition to the typical unvoiced and final speech sounds.

Experiment I:

• Hypothesis: Older isteners with poor speech perception abilities not only make more of the same kinds of errors as older listeners with good speech perception, they make different kinds of errors.