Abstract:

Objective To investigate the differences between children with slight-mild hearing loss (SMHL) and children with normal hearing (NH) on a variety of central auditory processing tasks, and to explore the necessity and possibility of early identification and intervention of auditory function in children with mild hearing loss. Methods The study adopted a case-control design and selected children aged 6 to 9 who visited the outpatient department of the Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Hearing and Speech Center and the Neonatal Hearing Impairment Diagnosis and Treatment Center from December 2023 to December 2024 as the research subjects. According to the pure tone audiometry results, the two groups of subjects were divided into the SMHL group and the NH group. The temporal resolution (using the gap-in-noise test), spatial resolution (using the sound source localization task), and speech recognition (using the binaural speech recognition rate test) of the two groups were compared. Results A total of 58 school-age children were included, with 29 children in the SMHL group and 29 children in the NH group. The male-to-female ratio in each group was 15:14. The age of the SMHL group was (89.7±12.0) months, and that of the NH group was (90.4±10.6) months. The binaural speech recognition rate of the SMHL group under different noise conditions was significantly lower than that of the NH group (P<0.05), and the lower the SNR, the worse the task performance. The minimum audible angle (P<0.01) and the root mean square error of pink noise source azimuth identification (P<0.01) in the SMHL group were significantly lower than those in the NH group. The threshold for gap-in-noise (GIN) recognition was higher in the SMHL group than that in the NH group but not significant (P=0.375). Conclusions Children with SMHL demonstrate significantly poorer performance in speech recognition and certain sound source localization tasks in noisy environments compared to NH children, suggesting the need for further research to evaluate whether these deficits may further impact their cognitive development and social adaptation, as well as the appropriateness of interventions.

Key words: slight-mild hearing loss, auditory processing, school-age children