The Cantonese Hearing in Noise Test for Children.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wong LLN
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6423679 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan-Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
The Cantonese Hearing in Noise Test for Children.
Wong Lena L N LLN Chen Yuan Y Leung Kam P KP
Trends in hearing 20190101
The aim of this study was to develop a children's version of the Cantonese Hearing in Noise Test (CHINT-C). This was accomplished in two stages. First, a total of 120 sentences understood by children aged 6-7 years were selected from the original pool of CHINT sentences and were grouped into 12 lists, each containing 10 sentences composed of 10 characters. Following this, 260 primary and secondary school children, with ages ranging from 6 to 17 years, and 21 adults of age 18 or older were admini ...[more]
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Project description:PurposePrevious studies have revealed increased frontal brain activation during speech comprehension in background noise. Few, however, used tonal languages. The normal pattern of brain activation during a challenging speech-in-nose task using a tonal language remains unclear. The Mandarin Hearing-in-Noise Test (HINT) is a well-established test for assessing the ability to interpret speech in background noise. The current study used Mandarin HINT (MHINT) sentences and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activation with MHINT sentences.MethodsThirty native Mandarin-speaking subjects with normal peripheral hearing were recruited. Functional MRI was performed while subjects were presented with either HINT "clear" sentences with low-level background noise [signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) = +3 dB] or "noisy" sentences with high-level background noise (SNR = -5 dB). Subjects were instructed to answer with a button press whether a visually presented target word was included in the sentence. Brain activation between noisy and clear sentences was compared. Activation in each condition was also compared to a resting, no sentence presentation, condition.ResultsNoisy sentence comprehension showed increased activity in areas associated with tone processing and working memory, including the right superior and middle frontal gyri [Brodmann Areas (BAs) 46, 10]. Reduced activity with noisy sentences was seen in auditory, language, memory and somatosensory areas, including the bilateral superior and middle temporal gyri, left Heschl's gyrus (BAs 21, 22), right temporal pole (BA 38), bilateral amygdala-hippocampus junction, and parahippocampal gyrus (BAs 28, 35), left inferior parietal lobule extending to left postcentral gyrus (BAs 2, 40), and left putamen.ConclusionIncreased frontal activation in the right hemisphere occurred when comprehending noisy spoken sentences in Mandarin. Compared to studies using non-tonal languages, this activation was strongly right-sided and involved subregions not previously reported. These findings may reflect additional effort in lexical tone perception in this tonal language. Additionally, this continuous fMRI protocol may offer a time-efficient way to assess group differences in brain activation with a challenging speech-in-noise task.
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Project description:Noise-induced hidden hearing loss (HHL) is a new type of hearing loss that has been identified in recent years and leads to insidious damage to the cochlea, unlike the well-known noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). However, the cellular and molecular basis for it remains to be elucidated. Here, we established a single-cell transcriptome profile of the C57BL/6J mouse cochlea, in which we describe the transcriptome changes of individual cell types within the cochlea with HHL and NIHL. Mice in the HHL group were exposed to 110 dB of noise for 2 hours, and those in the NIHL group were exposed to 115 dB of noise for 4 hours for 3 days. The cochlea was taken 6 hours after the last noise exposure. The control group was not exposed to noise, with other conditions being the same as those in the noise-exposed group. The results of sequencing at the single-cell level help us gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the development of HHL and NIHL.
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Project description:ObjectivesSpeech perception in noise is an important aspect of the rehabilitation of children with hearing loss. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility and reliability of the Dutch digits-in-noise (DIN) test in the clinical follow-up of children with hearing aids (HAs) and/or cochlear implants (CIs). A second aim of the study was to gain insight in the speech perception in noise performance of children with different degrees of hearing loss.DesignWe retrospectively analyzed DIN test data of Dutch-speaking children with hearing loss (N = 188; 5 to 18 years old). A free-field version of the DIN-test was used. Children with open-set phoneme recognition in quiet of >70% at 65 dB SPL (best aided condition) were included. Ages ranged from 5 to 18 years old. All were experienced HA or CI users and had used their device(s) for at least 1 year before the measurement in the study. The DIN-test was performed in the framework of a clinical rehabilitation program. During testing, children wore their own devices with normal daily programs.ResultsThe average speech reception threshold (SRT) was -3.6 dB (SD 3.6) for the first list and significantly improved to -4.0 dB (SD 3.1) for the second list. HA users had a 4-dB better SRT compared with CI users. The larger the child's hearing loss, the worse the SRT is. However, 15% of the children who completed a first list of 24 trials were unable to complete a second list. Mean adaptive staircase trajectories across trials suggested that learning occurred throughout the first list, and that loss of sustained attention contributed to response variability during the second list.ConclusionThe DIN test can be used to assess speech perception in noise abilities for children with different degrees of hearing loss and using HAs or CIs. The children with hearing loss required a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) than did normal-hearing children and the required SNR is larger as the hearing loss increases. However, the current measurement procedure should be optimized for use in standard pediatric audiological care, as 15% of the children were unable to conduct a second list after the first list to reach a more stable SNR.
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Project description:The threshold equalizing noise (TEN(HL)) is a clinically administered test to detect cochlear "dead regions" (i.e., regions of loss of inner hair cell [IHC] connectivity), using a "pass/fail" criterion based on the degree of elevation of a masked threshold in a tone-detection task. With sensorineural hearing loss, some elevation of the masked threshold is commonly observed but usually insufficient to create a "fail" diagnosis. The experiment reported here investigated whether the gray area between pass and fail contained information that correlated with factors such as age or cumulative high-level noise exposure (>100 dBA sound pressure levels), possibly indicative of damage to cochlear structures other than the more commonly implicated outer hair cells. One hundred and twelve participants (71 female) who underwent audiometric screening for a sensorineural hearing loss, classified as either normal or mild, were recruited. Their age range was 32 to 74 years. They were administered the TEN test at four frequencies, 0.75, 1, 3, and 4 kHz, and at two sensation levels, 12 and 24 dB above their pure-tone absolute threshold at each frequency. The test frequencies were chosen to lie either distinctly away from, or within, the 2 to 6 kHz region where noise-induced hearing loss is first clinically observed as a notch in the audiogram. Cumulative noise exposure was assessed by the Noise Exposure Structured Interview (NESI). Elements of the NESI also permitted participant stratification by music experience. Across all frequencies and testing levels, a strong positive correlation was observed between elevation of TEN threshold and absolute threshold. These correlations were little-changed even after noise exposure and music experience were factored out. The correlations were observed even within the range of "normal" hearing (absolute thresholds ≤15 dB HL). Using a clinical test, sensorineural hearing deficits were observable even within the range of clinically "normal" hearing. Results from the TEN test residing between "pass" and "fail" are dominated by processes not related to IHCs. The TEN test for IHC-related function should therefore only be considered for its originally designed function, to generate a binary decision, either pass or fail.
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Project description:Hearing in noise is a core problem in audition, and a challenge for hearing-impaired listeners, yet the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We explored whether harmonic frequency relations, a signature property of many communication sounds, aid hearing in noise for normal hearing listeners. We measured detection thresholds in noise for tones and speech synthesized to have harmonic or inharmonic spectra. Harmonic signals were consistently easier to detect than otherwise identical inharmonic signals. Harmonicity also improved discrimination of sounds in noise. The largest benefits were observed for two-note up-down "pitch" discrimination and melodic contour discrimination, both of which could be performed equally well with harmonic and inharmonic tones in quiet, but which showed large harmonic advantages in noise. The results show that harmonicity facilitates hearing in noise, plausibly by providing a noise-robust pitch cue that aids detection and discrimination.
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Project description:OBJECTIVES:(1) Measure sentence recognition in co-located and spatially separated target and masker configurations in school-aged children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) and with normal hearing (NH). (2) Compare self-reported hearing-related quality-of-life (QoL) scores in school-aged children with UHL and NH. DESIGN:Listeners were school-aged children (6 to 12 yrs) with permanent UHL (n = 41) or NH (n = 35) and adults with NH (n = 23). Sentence reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured using Hearing In Noise Test-Children sentences in quiet and in the presence of 2-talker child babble or a speech-shaped noise masker in target/masker spatial configurations: 0/0, 0/-60, 0/+60, or 0/±60?degrees azimuth. Maskers were presented at a fixed level of 55 dBA, while the level of the target sentences varied adaptively to estimate the SRT. Hearing-related QoL was measured using the Hearing Environments and Reflection on Quality of Life (HEAR-QL-26) questionnaire for child subjects. RESULTS:As a group, subjects with unaided UHL had higher (poorer) SRTs than age-matched peers with NH in all listening conditions. Effects of age, masker type, and spatial configuration of target and masker signals were found. Spatial release from masking was significantly reduced in conditions where the masker was directed toward UHL subjects' normal-hearing ear. Hearing-related QoL scores were significantly poorer in subjects with UHL compared to those with NH. Degree of UHL, as measured by four-frequency pure-tone average, was significantly correlated with SRTs only in the two conditions where the masker was directed towards subjects' normal-hearing ear, although the unaided Speech Intelligibility Index at 65 dB SPL was significantly correlated with SRTs in four conditions, some of which directed the masker to the impaired ear or both ears. Neither pure-tone average nor unaided Speech Intelligibility Index was correlated with QoL scores. CONCLUSIONS:As a group, school-aged children with UHL showed substantial reductions in masked speech perception and hearing-related QoL, irrespective of sex, laterality of hearing loss, and degree of hearing loss. While some children demonstrated normal or near-normal performance in certain listening conditions, a disproportionate number of thresholds fell in the poorest decile of the NH data. These findings add to the growing literature challenging the past assumption that one ear is "good enough."
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Project description:In Chinese languages, tones are used to express the lexical meaning of words. It is therefore important to analyze the role of lexical tone in Chinese sentence recognition accuracy. There is a lack of research on the role of Cantonese lexical tones in sentence recognition accuracy. Therefore, this study examined the contribution of lexical tone information to Cantonese sentence recognition accuracy and its cognitive correlates in adults with normal hearing (NH). A text-to-speech synthesis engine was used to synthesize Cantonese daily-use sentences with each word carrying an original or a flat lexical tone, which were then presented to 97 participants in quiet, in speech-shaped noise (SSN), and in two-talker babble (TTB) noise conditions. Both target sentences and noises were presented at 65 dB binaurally via insert headphones. It was found that listeners with NH can almost perfectly recognize a daily-use Cantonese sentence with mismatched lexical tone information in quiet, while their sentence recognition decreases substantially in noise. The same finding was reported for Mandarin, which has a relatively simple tonal system, suggesting that the current results may be applicable to other tonal languages. In addition, working memory (WM) was significantly related to decline in sentence recognition score in the TTB but not in the SSN, when the lexical tones were mismatched. This finding can be explained using the Ease of Language Understanding model and suggests that those with higher WM are less likely to be affected by the degraded lexical information for perceiving daily-use sentences in the TTB.
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Project description:ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to examine age- and hearing-related differences in school-age children's benefit from visual speech cues. The study addressed three questions: (1) Do age and hearing loss affect degree of audiovisual (AV) speech enhancement in school-age children? (2) Are there age- and hearing-related differences in the mechanisms underlying AV speech enhancement in school-age children? (3) What cognitive and linguistic variables predict individual differences in AV benefit among school-age children?DesignForty-eight children between 6 and 13 years of age (19 with mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss; 29 with normal hearing) and 14 adults with normal hearing completed measures of auditory and AV syllable detection and/or sentence recognition in a two-talker masker type and a spectrally matched noise. Children also completed standardized behavioral measures of receptive vocabulary, visuospatial working memory, and executive attention. Mixed linear modeling was used to examine effects of modality, listener group, and masker on sentence recognition accuracy and syllable detection thresholds. Pearson correlations were used to examine the relationship between individual differences in children's AV enhancement (AV-auditory-only) and age, vocabulary, working memory, executive attention, and degree of hearing loss.ResultsSignificant AV enhancement was observed across all tasks, masker types, and listener groups. AV enhancement of sentence recognition was similar across maskers, but children with normal hearing exhibited less AV enhancement of sentence recognition than adults with normal hearing and children with hearing loss. AV enhancement of syllable detection was greater in the two-talker masker than the noise masker, but did not vary significantly across listener groups. Degree of hearing loss positively correlated with individual differences in AV benefit on the sentence recognition task in noise, but not on the detection task. None of the cognitive and linguistic variables correlated with individual differences in AV enhancement of syllable detection or sentence recognition.ConclusionsAlthough AV benefit to syllable detection results from the use of visual speech to increase temporal expectancy, AV benefit to sentence recognition requires that an observer extracts phonetic information from the visual speech signal. The findings from this study suggest that all listener groups were equally good at using temporal cues in visual speech to detect auditory speech, but that adults with normal hearing and children with hearing loss were better than children with normal hearing at extracting phonetic information from the visual signal and/or using visual speech information to access phonetic/lexical representations in long-term memory. These results suggest that standard, auditory-only clinical speech recognition measures likely underestimate real-world speech recognition skills of children with mild to severe hearing loss.
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Project description:ObjectiveTo explore the association of lifestyles, caspase gene (CASP), and noise kurtosis with noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL).DesignThree hundred seven NIHL individuals and 307 matched controls from factories in Chinese factories participated in this case-control study. Age, sex, noise exposure, exfoliated oral mucosa cells, and lifestyles of participants were gathered by the authors. The single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped using the Kompetitive Allele Specific polymerase chain reaction (KASP) method.ResultsThe risk of NIHL was higher for people who worked in the complex noise environment than for people exposed to steady noise environment (adjusted: OR = 1.806, P = 0.002). Smoking and regular earphone use increased the risk of NIHL (adjusted: OR = 1.486, P = 0.038). The GG genotype of the recessive model and G allele in rs1049216, together with the TT genotype of the recessive model in rs6948 decreased the NIHL risk (adjusted: OR = 0.659, P = 0.017). Oppositely, the AA genotype of additive model in rs12415607 had a higher NIHL risk (adjusted: OR = 1.804, P = 0.024). In the additive models, there was a positive interaction between noise kurtosis and CASP3 polymorphisms (RERI = 1.294, P = 0.013; RERI = 1.198, P = 0.031).ConclusionsNoise kurtosis, three SNPs (rs1049216, rs6948, and rs12415607), smoking and earphone use were found to be related to NIHL, and there was a positive interaction between noise kurtosis and CASP3. Results from this study can be used to prevent and detect NIHL and for genetic testing.
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