Speech perception in noise for bilingual listeners with normal hearing

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine if speech-in-noise ability, as measured by SNR-50 and SNR loss in bilingual Spanish listeners with normal hearing, was affected by test difficulty. Design: Quasi-experimental, non-randomized intervention study. Study sample: Two groups of adult listeners participated: monolingual English listeners with normal hearing (N = 12) and bilingual Spanish listeners with normal hearing who were proficient in English (N = 10). The quick speech-in-noise (QuickSIN), the Bamford-Kowal-Bench speech-in-noise (BKB-SIN), and the words-in-noise (WIN) tests were used to assess signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss and SNR-50 for both groups. Results: Despite the fact that the bilinguals had normal hearing and were proficient in English, each of the speech-in-noise tests evaluated indicated the Spanish listeners had measurable SNR loss and higher than normal SNR-50s. Performance on the BKB-SIN was best for both groups, indicating test difficulty had a significant impact on speech perception in noise. Conclusions: Bilingual Spanish listeners with normal hearing exhibited a mild SNR loss comparable to that observed for a person with hearing loss. This decreased performance in noise requires an improved SNR for this population to reach a comparable level of comprehension to their monolingual English counterparts.

Key Words:

• Speech perception in noise
• signal-to-noise ratio
• signal-to-noise ratio loss
• SNR-50
• bilingual
• monolingual

Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by a grant from the US Department of Education, #H325100322. Appreciation is expressed to Laura Greene Coulter for her contributions to the pilot study that formed the impetus for this study. Portions of this manuscript were presented at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in November 2014, in Orlando, Florida, and at AudiologyNOW! in March, 2015 in San Antonio, Texas.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.