Mandarin Phonemes as a Screening Tool for Children with Hearing Impairment:Aided Performance Verification and Clinical Application

• Main Authors: LIN, CHUN-YI, 林郡儀
• Other Authors: CHANG, HSIU-WEN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/25184257925282353987

碩士 === 國立臺北護理健康大學 === 語言治療與聽力研究所 === 105 === The present study aimed to examine the relationship between Mandarin phonemes and narrowband noise in the aided condition. The purpose of the study was to determine to what extend the Mandarin phoneme detection thresholds were correlated with the aided detection thresholds with narrowband noise at various audiometric frequencies. Finally a Mandarin phoneme detection audiogram with normal range was developed for use of hearing aid evaluation in clinical settings. A group of 30 adults with normal-hearing, of whom 20 participated in speech sound calibration purposes, and the other 10 adults were tested for normative values of Mandarin phonemes. In addition, a total of 30 children with hearing impairment, aged 3 to 12 years old, also participated in the present study and were divided into three groups for further analysis based on their degree of hearing losses. Our results indicated that in the aided situation, the aided detection thresholds with the three Mandarin phonemes /p, f, ɕ/ were highly correlated with the aided narrowband noise threshold at different audiometric frequencies. The detection thresholds with vowels and nasal sounds were better (lower) than those with consonants. With increasing hearing losses, less aided phoneme detection thresholds fell into the normal limits. In conclusion, the detection thresholds of Mandarin phonemes did not completely correspond to the hearing ability of the frequency as revealed by the acoustic aspects of those phonemes. When using Mandarin phonemes threshold to estimate the hearing sensitivity with narrow band noise should be interpreted with caution.