The importance of hearing evaluation in the study of simulated visual impairment in speech reading abilities

摘要

We read with interest the article by Dickinson and Taylor regarding the impact of contrast sensitivity on speech-reading abilities. We disagree with their conclusion that the difficulties in 'communication' of the elderly with reduced hearing could be visual as opposed to auditory in origin since the authors studied the effect of masking noise on sentence repetition score in young subjects with normal hearing and did not consider:1. That the difficulties in communication of the elderly do not depend only on a lack of comprehension abilities.2. The complexity of the deterioration of the cochlear structures (particularly of the outer hair cells) and central auditory pathway variations in presbycusis (age-related hearing loss), which cannot be simply represented by reduced speech comprehension abilities in noise.