Relationships between Comfortable Loudness Levels for Speech and Speech Discrimination in Sensorineural Hearing Loss

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the sensation level selected as most comfortable for loudness and intelligibility, and the sensation level at which maximum speech discrimination is obtained. An articulation function was generated at five sensation levels for 45 subjects with sensorineural hearing loss. Speech discrimination scores were also obtained at sensation levels corresponding to most comfortable loudness levels for loudness and intelligibility. Results indicated that most comfortable loudness, at least under the conditions of the present study, does not appear to be the level at which maximum speech discrimination is obtained. Therefore, the use of comfortable loudness as a single sensation level for testing a subject's maximum discrimination is not recommended at this time.