Masked speech recognition by 6–13-year-olds with early-childhood otitis media: effects of acoustic condition and otologic history

Objective: To investigate speech recognition in school-age children with early-childhood otitis media (OM) in conditions with noise or speech maskers with or without interaural differences. To also investigate the effects of three otologic history factors. Design: Using headphone presentation, speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) were measured with simple sentences. As maskers, stationary speech-shaped noise (SSN) or two-talker running speech (TTS) were used. The stimuli were presented in a monaural and binaural condition (SSN) or a co-located and spatially separated condition (TTS). Based on the available medical records, overall OM duration, OM onset age, and time since the last OM episode were estimated. Study sample: 6–13-year-olds with a history of recurrent OM (N = 42) or without any ear diseases (N = 20) with normal tympanograms and audiograms at the time of testing. Results: Mixed-model regression analyses that controlled for age showed poorer SRTs for the OM group (Δ-value = 0.84 dB, p = 0.009). These appeared driven by the spatially separated, binaural, and monaural conditions. The OM group showed large inter-individual differences, which were unrelated to the otologic history factors. Conclusions: Early-childhood OM can affect speech recognition in different acoustic conditions. The effects of the otologic history warrant further investigation.