The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between live and recorded determinations of most comfortable loudness levels (MCL's) and to determine if a relationship existed between MCL's, tolerance levels (TL's), and acoustic reflex thresholds so that further research might be conducted regarding the use of acoustic impedance measures in hearing aid fitting.Thirty normal hearing female subjects were tested in this investigation. MCL's using live and recorded stimuli, TL's, and contralateral and ipsilateral acoustic reflex thresholds were obtained for each subject. Correlation coefficients were computed to determine if a relationship existed between any of the measurements.It was concluded that live voice stimuli yielded highly equivalent results to recorded stimuli in finding MCL's. Acoustic reflex thresholds were found to be poor predictors of MCL's and TL's. Before acoustic reflex measurements can be used in hearing aid fitting procedures, further research is warranted.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the California Consonant Test by manipulating selected variables to determine whether it would be a reliable and valid alternative to the presently used CID W-22 word lists with the sensorineural hearing loss population. This study also looked at the scores obtained on the two discrimination tests and the scores obtained on the Profile Questionnaire for Rating Communicative Performance. In this way, a closer look was taken to determine how much difficulty hearing impaired individuals were reportedly experiencing in understanding speech as compared to their actual performance on the two discrimination tests.The test population consisted of 16 male and 16 female subjects with bilateral symmetrical, sensorineural hearing losses. The CID W-22 Auditory Test and the California Consonant Test (live voice and recorded presentations) were administered to each subject under aided and unaided conditions. At the end of each testing session, each subject was asked to answer the Profile Questionnaire for Rating Communicative Performance in a Home Environment.Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient and t-tests for independent measures were calculated to determine if significant correlations existed.It was concluded from this investigation that the California Consonant Test is a more sensitive indicator of the phoneme difficulties experienced by the individuals with &high frequency sensorineural hearing loss than is the' CID W-22 Auditory Test. Although significant correlations were not obtained between the two discrimination tests and the questionnaire, a question by question analysis indicated that all the individuals had at least some difficulties in all situations proposed in this questionnaire. It would therefore seem that the California Consonant Test is a more accurate indicator of the individual's problems in the communicative situation.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The main purpose of this research was to develop a screening test for speech discrimination ability. Twenty-five of the most difficult CID W-22 words were chosen for the material. These words were presented live voice without a carrier phrase, recorded with a carrier phrase, and recorded without a carrier phrase. These scores were then compared to the CID 4-22 score, Two groups of twenty subjects were tested: one group of normal hearing young adults and one group of subjects with sensors-neural hearing losses.All three experimental versions of the screening test yield a valid indication of the listener's speech discrimination ability. Any listener scoring 80% or better on the screening test has essentially normal discrimination ability.

This thesis compared the loudness discomfort levels (LDL) for a group of normal hearing children to those for a group of children with sensori-neural hearing losses. The children with a loss were students at a school for the deaf. The LDL’s for the frequencies 250, 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz and for speech were obtained.It was found that the sensori-neural loss group had higher LDL’s for both pure tones and speech than the normal hearers. It was further found that for the normal hearers, the LDL’s were higher for speech than for the average of the pure tone speech frequencies. The results of this study were also higher than previous researchers had found. The possible reasons for the differences between the groups and between the results of this study and previous ones were discussed.

The hypothesis was proposed that hard of hearing individuals are able to understand men's voices better than women's voices relative to the understanding of the same voices by normal hearers. Eighteen normal and eighteen hard of hearing subjects participated in a study designed to demonstrate the relationship between sex and intelligibility of speaker for hard of hearing persons compared to normal hearing individuals. Discrimination scores were obtained with both a male and a female speaker under both quiet and noisy listening conditions. Analysis of variance techniques revealed that no significant difference in discrimination scores occurred due to sex of speaker when the hard of hearing subjects were compared with the normal hearers. Further examination of the data indicated that neither extent nor configuration of hearing loss influenced the relative intelligibility of male and female voices for hard of hearing persons. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis.

Thesis (M. Communication Pathology)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Summary in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-31).

Thesis (Ed.D.) -- Teachers College, Columbia University, 1989. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Eleanor B. Morrison. Dissertation Committee: Honor O'Malley, Richard W. Matthes. Bibliography: leaves 102-107.

Thesis (M. Aud.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-75). Also available via the World Wide Web.