Sensory deprivation due to otitis media episodes in early childhood and its effect at later age: A psychoacoustic and speech perception measure.

BACKGROUND: Past research has reported that children with repeated occurrences of otitis media at an early age have a negative impact on speech perception at a later age. The present study necessitates documenting the temporal and spectral processing on speech perception in noise from normal and atypical groups.

OBJECTIVES: The present study evaluated the relation between speech perception in noise and temporal; and spectral processing abilities in children with normal and atypical groups.

METHODS: The study included two experiments. In the first experiment, temporal resolution and frequency discrimination of listeners with normal group and three subgroups of atypical groups (had a history of OM) a) less than four episodes b) four to nine episodes and c) More than nine episodes during their chronological age of 6 months to 2 years) were evaluated using measures of temporal modulation transfer function and frequency discrimination test. In the second experiment, SNR 50 was evaluated on each group of study participants. All participants had normal hearing and middle ear status during the course of testing.

RESULTS: Demonstrated that children with atypical group had significantly poorer modulation detection threshold, peak sensitivity and bandwidth; and frequency discrimination to each F0 than normal hearing listeners. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation seen between measures of temporal resolution; frequency discrimination and speech perception in noise. It infers atypical groups have significant impairment in extracting envelope as well as fine structure cues from the signal.

CONCLUSION: The results supported the idea that episodes of OM before 2 years of agecan produce periods of sensory deprivation that alters the temporal and spectral skills which in turn has negative consequences on speech perception in noise.