At SNR 0, the DHH speech understanding percentage is?

At SNR 0, the DHH speech understanding percentage is?

• A. 0%
• B. 10%
• C. 5%
• D. 15%

Answer: (C)

Understanding speech in noise becomes extremely limited when the speech and the background noise are equally loud. This situation, known as SNR 0, pits the speech signal directly against masking noise, so the listener must extract what little speech cues remain through degraded audibility and processing. For someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, those cues are sparse, and most of the speech information is masked, leaving only a small fraction that can be correctly identified. That typically results in only about five percent correct understanding. So at SNR 0, the expected performance is around 5%, which is why the best choice is the one reflecting that very low level of comprehension. The other percentages would indicate better access to speech than is typically possible in this equal-noise condition.

Understanding speech in noise becomes extremely limited when the speech and the background noise are equally loud. This situation, known as SNR 0, pits the speech signal directly against masking noise, so the listener must extract what little speech cues remain through degraded audibility and processing. For someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, those cues are sparse, and most of the speech information is masked, leaving only a small fraction that can be correctly identified. That typically results in only about five percent correct understanding. So at SNR 0, the expected performance is around 5%, which is why the best choice is the one reflecting that very low level of comprehension. The other percentages would indicate better access to speech than is typically possible in this equal-noise condition.