Acceso usuarios
Ana Luz Maggi, Diego Alexis Evin, María Hinalaf
La dificultad para discriminar el habla inmersa en ruido de fondo provoca molestias, pérdidas funcionales en actividades cotidianas y es un indicador prematuro de deterioros auditivos. Su evaluación cobra cada vez más relevancia. Sin embargo, actualmente en Argentina, son escasos los protocolos estandarizados para su empleo en la rutina audiológica. Este trabajo tiene por objetivo estudiar la equivalencia de las diferentes listas de la batería BEPPA para su adopción como instrumento de evaluación audiológica. Se realizó un estudio descriptivo correlacional transversal de discriminación del habla en 32 jóvenes con umbrales de audición normales, para lo cual se utilizaron listas de palabras monosílabas, bisílabas, con secuencias consecutivas de vocales o transiciones vocálicas, y oraciones de un grupo entonativo de la batería BEPPA. Esos estímulos, pronunciados por una locutora profesional, se presentaron a los participantes de forma binaural diótica sin ruido y con ruido de características espectrales similares a las del habla a una relación señal ruido (RSR) de 5dB, 0dB y -5dB, para solicitar a los participantes que repitieran luego de cada estímulo lo que escucharan en voz alta. A fin de considerar el factor de frecuencia de uso en la activación léxica, se registró la frecuencia de cada palabra utilizando como referencia dos corpus lingüísticos del español contemporáneo. Los resultados mostraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas en cantidad de errores al contrastar las condiciones RSR 5dB y 0dB; y entre condiciones 0dB y -5dB, lo que indica que resultan suficientemente diferentes como contextos de evaluación. El contraste de frecuencias léxicas entre las listas de palabras de cada categoría no mostró diferencias estadísticamente significativas, por lo que se podría descartar el efecto en las respuestas de este elemento como factor de confusión. A partir de las diferencias observadas en los errores cometidos, se pudo concluir que, a excepción de dos listas de palabras monosílabas, las demás muestran dificultades de reconocimiento equivalentes y, por lo tanto, resultan útiles para la evaluación audiológica.
The difficulty in discriminating speech immersed in background noise is a condition that, besides causing discomfort and functional loss in daily activities, is an early indicator of hearing impairment. The evaluation of this hearing function has gained relevance in the field of audiology in recent years, however, there are currently few standardized protocols for its use as a routine audiological screening in Argentina. The purpose of this work is to study the equivalence of the different lists of the BEPPA battery with the aim of adopting it as an assessment tool in the audiology routine. This research was carried out at CINTRA – UE CONICET UTN. A cross-sectional descriptive correlational study of speech discrimination was conducted on 32 young people with normal hearing thresholds UNC and UTN students during the years 2019 and 2020. Normal tonal thresholds (≤ 21 dB) within the conventional range (250–8000) Hz, hearing rest for at least 8 hours and signed informed consent were established as inclusion criteria. The research was approved by the Institutional Committee for Ethics in Health Research of the Hospital Nacional de Clínicas. Lists of monosyllabic and bisyllabic words, words with consecutive vowel sequences or “vocalic transitions”, and sentences with a single intonational group from the BEPPA battery were used. These stimuli were recorded in a CINTRA soundproof chamber, by a professional female speaker and masked using noise with a speech-like spectrum. The signals were reproduced by a digital audiometer. were presented to participants in a binaural dichotic manner in quiet and masked with noise of similar spectral characteristics to those of speech at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 5dB, 0dB and -5dB, asking them to repeat after each stimulus what they heard aloud. To consider the frequency of use factor on lexical activation, the frequency of each word was recorded using two linguistic corpora of contemporary Spanish as a reference. The results showed statistically significant differences in the number of errors when contrasting the RSR conditions 5dB and 0dB;
and between 0dB and -5dB conditions, indicating that they are different enough as evaluation contexts. The contrast of lexical frequencies between the word lists of each category did not show significant differences, so its effect as a confounding factor in the responses obtained could be ruled out. From the observed differences in errors between lists for each category, we can conclude that except for two monosyllabic word lists, the others exhibit equivalent recognition difficulties and are therefore useful for audiological assessment.
