Question: What is the speech banana?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
We don't often think about how we can hear and understand speech until we can't always hear it. We might notice that this occurs with certain types of voices or in different situations. If you're having a problem, visit an audiologist or an ENT specialist.
Words in our language contain vowels, which are lower-pitched sounds. Most people hear these sounds, such as "ee", "or" and "ar" fairly well but by themselves they sound a bit like grunting. To make sense of words you also need to hear the higher-pitched consonants, which are quite often softer sounds. Sounds such as "f", "th" and "p" are very important to make sense of what you are hearing.
The audiologist will test your hearing over a range of frequencies, rather like playing a scale on a piano. The results are displayed on a graph called an audiogram, which shows a series of points going from low pitch to high across the graph and at certain points indicating the softest sound heard at each frequency.
The speech banana can be displayed on the audiogram also. The vowel sounds are on the left and the consonants generally at the right and they are placed at the volume they are heard in normal speech. So the speech banana is an area rather than a line on the chart like your audiogram.
Where it gets interesting, is when your audiogram results are also plotted on the same chart. Speaking very generally, if your audiogram is above the speech banana you probably won't have difficulty hearing normal speech under reasonable conditions. However, if your audiogram intersects the speech banana then some sounds will probably be difficult to hear. Often these are the consonants, the breathy sounds like "f", "th", "t", "s" and "sh".
Consider the following:
"Sue will you ask Rod if he would like fish and chips for lunch?"
This might sound like
"_ue will you a_k Rod i_ _e would like _i__ an_ __i__ _or lun__?" for someone with a hearing loss in the higher frequencies.
Wearing hearing aids can help to hear the missing consonants, and by attending the Better Hearing Australia Canberra lipreading classes you can learn how to recognise the missing speech movements on the speaker's lips.
Contact BHA at bhacanberra@gmail.com
Response by: Sue and Haydn Daw – Better Hearing Australia Canberra
Brought to you by the Fuzzy Logic science show, 11am Sundays on 2XX 98.3FM. Send your questions to askfuzzy@zoho.com. Twitter @FuzzyLogicSci