The Relationship Between Level of Physical Activity and Speech Perception Abilities

Abstract

Introduction: Kearns et al., (2019) observed subjects having an increased ability to recognize speech in noise after 30 minutes. Parbery-Clark et al., (2009) demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between speech recognition in noise results vs. working memory. Curhan et al., (2013), based on collected survey data, reported that women who were more physically active were less likely to develop hearing loss. Kawakami et al., (2021) showed a positive association between level of physical activity (LPA) and risk reduction in hearing loss development. Therefore, it was hypothesized that there would be statistically significant relationships between level of self-reported physical activity vs. pure-tone thresholds, speech-in-noise perception ability, and working memory. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between degree of physical activity, pure-tone audiometry, speech-in-noise perception ability, and working memory. Methods: Twenty-three native English speakers with normal pure-tone thresholds participated in this study. Bilateral pure-tone average (PTA) was calculated for all participants. Speech recognition in noise ability was evaluated using the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT; Nilsson et al., 1994; Vermiglio, 2008) and the AzBio test (Spahr et al., 2012). Working memory was evaluated using the Digit-Span test (Wechsler, 1991). A questionnaire was used to categorize the participants' LPA. The relationships between self-reported LPA vs. all test results were evaluated with the Spearman rho statistic. Results: A weak negative relationship was found between LPA vs. binaural PTA (r = -0.21, p = 0.33). A weak negative relationship was found between LPA vs. HINT thresholds (r = -0.36, p = 0.10). A very weak positive relationship was found between LPA vs. AzBio scores (r = 0.15, p = 0.50). A very weak positive relationship was found between LPA vs. Digit Span scores (r = 0.18, p = 0.42). Discussion: Contrary to the three hypotheses, no statistically significant relationships (p > 0.05) were found between degree of physical activity vs. the test results. The results of this investigation are inconsistent with previous investigations (Curhan et al., 2013; Kawakami et al., 2021; Kearns et al., 2019). Future research should further investigate these relationships using alternative measures of physical activity.