This study investigated the characteristics of auditory event-related potentials (AERP) evoked by vowel and consonant contrasts in prelingual deafness adults, who fitted with bilateral hearing aids (HA) in quiet and noisy environments. Standard stimuli /ba/ (75%) and deviant stimuli (/ga/ and /bu/, 12.5% each) were presented using a passive oddball paradigm in quiet and noisy (+10 decibel [dB] signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) conditions. Eighteen young adults aged 18-23 years with long-term bilateral HA, and 20 age-matched normal hearing (NH) individuals participated in the study. The hearing loss (HL) group showed lower N1-P2 and mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes and longer N1 and MMN latencies than the NH group. Both groups showed reduced N1-P2 amplitudes and longer MMN latencies in noise. The consonant contrast (/ga/-/ba/) induced lower and delayed MMN than the vowel contrast (/bu/-/ba/). Young adult bilateral HA users with prelingual severe to profound HL have poorer abilities in processing consonant-vowel syllables than people with NH, especially in noisy conditions and consonant contrast differences. Long-term auditory compensation provided by bilateral HA for people with prelingual severe and profound HL does not seem to enable adequate development of the auditory cortex.

Keywords: Event-related potential; Hearing aids; Hearing loss; Mismatch negativity; Noise.

Ying Yang completed her Ph.D. at the age of 28 years from East China Normal University, China. She is the head of the hearing and speech rehabilitation department of Binzhou Medical University, China. She has over 30 publications. She has been serving as an editorial board member of several reputed journals.