Central auditory testing with peripheral hearing loss.

Seventy subjects with sensorineural hearing losses participated in this study. The goal of the study was to examine the effect of peripheral hearing loss on auditory tasks that are used to assess dysfunction within the central auditory pathways. Each subject received a central auditory processing (CAP) test battery that consisted of: (1) a dichotic sentence listening task; (2) a monosyllabic filtered word task; (3) a spondaic word binaural fusion task; and (4) a rapidly alternating speech task. All of these tasks were affected by certain degrees/configurations of sensorineural hearing loss, with the monosyllabic filtered word task being the most seriously affected. From the results of this study, it was concluded that while the CAP test battery can be administered to certain persons with sensorineural hearing losses, all results must be interpreted with caution and in view of the basic audiological assessment.