Research has been done to investigate the interference of background noise in speech perception of listeners. AIM: The purpose of this was to study the effects of hearing loss and aging on the speech recognition ability with noisy backgrounds by using two kinds of noise. STUDY DESIGN: Clinical prospective. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Three groups were organized: one with adult listeners with normal hearing, another with adults with hearing loss in high frequencies, and the third one with elderly listeners with hearing loss in high frequencies. All subjects performed speech recognition tasks without noise, with wide spectrum white noise and "cocktail party" noise in the same signal to noise ratio (0 dB) in both ears. RESULTS: The results showed that noise interfered negatively in speech recognition ability in all groups. The adult listeners with normal hearing had better performance compared with the other two groups. However, the elderly group had the worst performance, more evident with "cocktail party" noise. All subjects showed better performance in the second ear tested, indicating a learning effect. CONCLUSION: These findings show that age related factors along with hearing loss contribute to the low performance of elderly people in speech perception with background noise and that the "cocktail party" noise was adequate for this investigation.
speech perception; speech test in noise; hearing
