Profound hearing loss and perception of sounds?
jtyoung_1 asked:
Which speech sounds would a child with profound hearing loss have difficulties perceiving? Would they have more difficulty with vowels or consonants?
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Which speech sounds would a child with profound hearing loss have difficulties perceiving? Would they have more difficulty with vowels or consonants?
October 27th, 2009 at 8:16 am
The child probably has been seen by an audiologist. The audiogram would definitely show which areas of sound are the worse and if there are areas of better hearing (frequency) . Typically, I always suspect that the hearing is worse for higher pitched sounds. That means the specific word or letter does not matter, but instead the tone that is being spoken to the hard of hearing person. My partner in my business is profoundly hard of hearing. She always hears me best when she can see my face and lips as I speak to her. Of course, there is the on-going problem that many words are pronounced so that some “look like” a different word. For example chew, glue, and new all appear to be the same word to a Hard of Hearing person. Also, the language that a person speaks has almost no effect on improving a Hard of Hearing person’s perception. Again, it is the pitch / tone of the spoken word that is most important. Most words that my partner has difficulty with are words where the consonant is not clearly pronounced or appear to be a similar “lip” movement. If I had to choose between vowels and consonants, I would say that a Hard of Hearing person would have more difficulty with consonants. Fred
October 30th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
If a child has a profound hearing loss, then they will have problems hearing ALL speech sounds; however, it depends which frequencies the loss is profound at. A profound hearing loss is near total deafness which is why all speech sounds would be affected.
Consonants are high frequency sounds - so if the hearing loss is more profound in the high frequencies, then they would have difficulty with consonants. Vowels are low in frequency.
To see a diagram and definition of various hearing loss severity (mild, moderate, severe and profound) hearing loss visit Healthy Hearing’s article on Degrees of Hearing Loss for more info:
If a child with a profound hearing loss wears hearing aids or a cochlear implant than they their ability to hear various speech sounds is improved but dependent upon how well the device works for them. kAudio