Meuret Sylvia, Ludwig Alexandra Annemarie, Predel Dorothee, Staske Burkhard, Fuchs Michael
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Section of Phoniatrics and Audiology, University Hospital of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Faculty of Biosciences, Pharmacy and Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Audiol Neurootol. 2017;22(6):326-342. doi: 10.1159/000485826. Epub 2018 Mar 1.
The present study investigated two measures of spatial acoustic perception in children and adolescents with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) tested without their hearing aids and compared it to age-matched controls. Auditory localization was quantified by means of a sound source identification task and auditory spatial discrimination acuity by measuring minimum audible angles (MAA). Both low- and high-frequency noise bursts were employed in the tests to separately address spatial auditory processing based on interaural time and intensity differences. In SNHL children, localization (hit accuracy) was significantly reduced compared to normal-hearing children and intraindividual variability (dispersion) considerably increased. Given the respective impairments, the performance based on interaural time differences (low frequencies) was still better than that based on intensity differences (high frequencies). For MAA, age-matched comparisons yielded not only increased MAA values in SNHL children, but also no decrease with increasing age compared to normal-hearing children. Deficits in MAA were most apparent in the frontal azimuth. Thus, children with SNHL do not seem to benefit from frontal positions of the sound sources as do normal-hearing children. The results give an indication that the processing of spatial cues in SNHL children is restricted, which could also imply problems regarding speech understanding in challenging hearing situations.
本研究调查了感音神经性听力损失（SNHL）儿童和青少年在未佩戴助听器情况下的两种空间听觉感知测量指标，并将其与年龄匹配的对照组进行比较。通过声源识别任务量化听觉定位，通过测量最小可听角度（MAA）量化听觉空间辨别敏锐度。测试中使用了低频和高频噪声脉冲，以分别基于双耳时间和强度差异来研究空间听觉处理。与听力正常的儿童相比，SNHL儿童的定位（命中准确率）显著降低，个体内变异性（离散度）大幅增加。鉴于各自的损伤情况，基于双耳时间差异（低频）的表现仍优于基于强度差异（高频）的表现。对于MAA，年龄匹配的比较结果显示，SNHL儿童不仅MAA值增加，而且与听力正常的儿童相比，MAA值不会随年龄增长而降低。MAA的缺陷在额方位最明显。因此，与听力正常的儿童不同，SNHL儿童似乎无法从声源的 frontal 位置中受益。结果表明，SNHL儿童对空间线索的处理受到限制，这也可能意味着在具有挑战性的听力环境中语音理解方面存在问题。
