Question
I would like to start measuring Acceptable Noise Levels (ANLs) with my patients. What is the recommended type of speech and noise to use when measuring an ANL and is there a recommended CD?
Answer
You can buy the official ANL CD (i.e., the Arizona Travelodge) from Cosmos Distributing Inc. (www.cosmosdistributinginc.com/). This is the CD that we use for the majority of our research projects on ANL. That said, we have just completed a project comparing the use of different stimuli on the effects of ANL. We compared a recording of a male speaker reading the Arizona travel story (from the Cosmos CD) to a recording of a different male speaker reading the Davy Crockett story (from the Synthetic Sentence Identification CD). ANLs did not vary regardless of the recording used. We also found that the gender of the speaker did not matter. The ANL CD from Cosmos also uses the multi-talker babble from the Revised SPIN, but we have found that you can use different forms of noise and this does not change the ANL. Generally speaking, you could use any recorded speaker and noise for ANL measurement as long as your sound field is calibrated properly. If you would like additional information on the ANL measurement, please visit our lab's website at web.utk.edu/~aspweb/faculty/nabelek/anl.shtml
Melinda C. Freyaldenhoven, Ph.D., CCC-A (Assistant Professor): Mindy earned the Ph.D. degree in Speech and Hearing Science from The University of Tennessee (Knoxville) in 2006. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Louisiana Tech University (Ruston).
Patrick N. Plyler, Ph.D., CCC-A (Assistant Professor): Patrick earned the Ph.D. degree in Speech and Hearing Science from The University of Tennessee (Knoxville) in 1998. He then moved to Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), where he was an Assistant Professor for 5 years. In 2004, Patrick returned to The University of Tennessee (Knoxville) as an Assistant Professor.
Melinda C. Freyaldenhoven, MA, CCC-A
Melinda Freyaldenhoven received the Master of Arts degree in Audiology in May 2003 and will receive the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Speech and Hearing Science in August 2006. Ms. Freyaldenhoven’s research has concentrated on the Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) procedure. She has 6 research manuscripts “in print” or “in press,” presented research at 12 national or international conferences, and received 5 grants/scholarships. Ms. Freyaldenhoven also served as an instructor for an Amplification Technology at The University of Tennessee.
Patrick N. Plyler, PhD, CCC-A
Assistant Professor.
Patrick Plyler graduated from The University of Tennessee with his Doctor of Philosophy in 1998. He then moved to Louisiana State University, where he was an Assistant Professor for 5 years. In 2004, Dr. Plyler returned to The University of Tennessee as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Plyler’s research interests are in the areas of diagnostic audiology, efficacy of advanced features in modern hearing instruments, and speech perception in quiet and in noise. Dr. Plyler has received external support for several research projects, most of which have investigated various features in digital hearing instruments. Dr. Plyler has published articles in the following journals: Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, Journal of Educational Audiology, Clinical Neurophysiology, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and Journal of Speech-Language Hearing Research. In addition, Dr. Plyler serves as an editorial consultant for the American Journal of Audiology, the Journal of Educational Audiology, Trends in Amplification, and the Journal of Speech-Language Hearing Research. Melinda Freyaldenhoven and Patrick Plyler have nothing to disclose.
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