Your Hearing
Your Hearing
As hearing care professionals it is critical to have descriptive counseling tools to communicate the impact of hearing loss on access to spoken language.
When discussing hearing levels we have two options:
- Classification-based counseling (e.g. the audiogram) – the modified Goodman scale uses mild, moderate, moderate-severe, severe, and profound to describe hearing levels.
- Audibility-based counseling – utilizes the speech-intelligibility index to describe the amount of long-term average speech spectrum that is available to a listener.
In isolation, the audiogram may not convey the impact of a hearing loss or the individual’s unique and personal experience in their different listening environments.
RESOURCES
The KIPA Mild Hearing Loss Tool
– calculate the speech intelligibility index with this web-based tool.
TBD
Speech Intelligibility Index
The Speech Intelligibility Index uses a person’s audiogram, along with the unique acoustics of their ear, to predict how much of everyday speech they’re able to actually access and hear.
Considerations:
- Children with an unaided SII score below 80 should be considered candidates for hearing technology due to increased risk for language delays (McCreery, Walker, Stiles, & Spratford, et al., 2020)
- A combination of unaided/aided SII, speech-in-noise recognition measures, hearing aid wear time, and language assessments help guide intervention decisions (Wiseman, McCreery, & Walker, 2023)
- These combined measures determine next steps, such as:
- Adding language supports
- Adjusting hearing aid settings
- Referring for a cochlear implant candidacy evaluation
RESOURCES
The KIPA Mild Hearing Loss Tool
– calculate the speech intelligibility index with this web-based tool. (kipagroup.org/charts)
Unfair Spelling Test
This is a simulation of high frequency hearing loss.
It demonstrates the difference between speech awareness and speech understanding.