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For instance, it
is quite common to perform some measure of speech understanding as part
of the basic hearing evaluation. If our intent is to determine any problems
the patient may be having in understanding speech it would make little
sense to measure speech understanding at the patient's threshold. I should
want to raise the level of the speech stimulus high enough that my patient
can at least hear the speech being presented. At this point I can assess
their ability to understand the speech knowing that they can at least
hear it.
Additionally, I may
want to compare my patient's ability to understand speech to the ability
of someone with normal hearing or compare them to the abilities of other
hearing impaired patients. In order to do this, I will need to deliver
the speech signal to all of my patients at a comparable loudness level.
The easiest way to do this is to first measure my patient's thresholds
and then present the speech signal at some specific level above the threshold
value.
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