Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Apr 17;61(4):1000-1011.
doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-H-17-0314.

Fatigue Related to Speech Processing in Children With Hearing Loss: Behavioral, Subjective, and Electrophysiological Measures

Samantha J Gustafson  1 , Alexandra P Key  1   2 , Benjamin W Y Hornsby  1 , Fred H Bess  1
Affiliations

Fatigue Related to Speech Processing in Children With Hearing Loss: Behavioral, Subjective, and Electrophysiological Measures

Samantha J Gustafson et al. J Speech Lang Hear Res. .

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine fatigue associated with sustained and effortful speech-processing in children with mild to moderately severe hearing loss.

Method: We used auditory P300 responses, subjective reports, and behavioral indices (response time, lapses of attention) to measure fatigue resulting from sustained speech-processing demands in 34 children with mild to moderately severe hearing loss (M = 10.03 years, SD = 1.93).

Results: Compared to baseline values, children with hearing loss showed increased lapses in attention, longer reaction times, reduced P300 amplitudes, and greater reports of fatigue following the completion of the demanding speech-processing tasks.

Conclusions: Similar to children with normal hearing, children with hearing loss demonstrate reductions in attentional processing of speech in noise following sustained speech-processing tasks-a finding consistent with the development of fatigue.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Average (1 SD) hearing thresholds for children in the final sample. ANSI = American National Standards Institute.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Averaged auditory-evoked potential (AEP) responses at Fz, Cz, and Pz electrode clusters recorded prior to and following completion of the speech-processing tasks. Dark and light tracings represent AEP responses to the target and standard stimuli, respectively. Dashed boxes highlight time windows used in the analyses. Asterisks indicate time windows where significant changes were observed between test stimuli.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Barnes M. E., Gozal D., & Molfese D. L. (2012). Attention in children with obstructive sleep apnoea: An event-related potentials study. Sleep Medicine, 13(4), 368–377. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bennett K. O., Billings C. J., Molis M. R., & Leek M. R. (2012). Neural encoding and perception of speech signals in informational masking. Ear and Hearing, 32(2), 231. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bertoli S., Smurzynski J., & Probst R. (2005). Effects of age, age-related hearing loss, and contralateral cafeteria noise on the discrimination of small frequency changes: Psychoacoustic and electrophysiological measures. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 6(3), 207–222. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bess F. H., Gustafson S. J., Corbett B. A., Lambert E. W., Camarata S. M., & Hornsby B. W. Y. (2016). Salivary cortisol profiles of children with hearing loss. Ear and Hearing, 37(3), 334–344. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bess F. H., Gustafson S. J., & Hornsby B. W. Y. (2014). How hard can it be to listen? Fatigue in school-age children with hearing loss. Journal of Educational Audiology, 20, 1–14.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources