auditory recognition of words-in-noise in normal hearing and mild-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss with different configurations

Background and aim: sensorineural hearing loss (snhl) reduces audibility and causes distortion, which result in difficulty with speech processing, especially in noisy environments. one of the new speech-in-noise tests is the words-in-noise (win) test. this study aimed to further investigate the signal-to-noise ratio 50% (snr-50) in subjects with mild to severe snhl and different configurations using the persian version of the win test compared to normal-hearing people. methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted on 54 patients with snhl aged 17– 75 years and 49 normal-hearing people aged 20–48 years. the auditory recognition in the presence of multi-talker babble noise was evaluated by the persian version of the win test (named arwin). results: the mean snr-50 in the normal-hearing group was 2.56±1.2 db, which increased significantly in subgroups with mild (10.13±4.8 db), moderate (14.51±4.7 db) and moderate-to-severe (16.61±4.3 db) snhl (p<0.001). conclusion: people with snhl need more snr by nearly 4–6 times than the normal-hearing group for recognition of monosyllabic persian words in the presence of multi-talker babble noise.