Speech Auditory Brainstem Responses: Effects of Background, Stimulus Duration, Consonant-Vowel, and Number of Epochs.

Only 12 normal-hearing adults were tested, so the results do not show how people with hearing loss, neurological disorders, or learning difficulties would respond. The study recorded only from the right ear, so it does not show whether responses from the left ear or both ears would be the same. The authors used a 70 Hz high-pass filter, while some earlier speech-ABR studies used 300 Hz, and the 300 Hz setting removed the responses in this study, so direct comparisons with those studies are limited. The number of epochs needed varied widely, so a fixed recording protocol may not work for every person. The study used synthetic CVs, including 50 millisecond sounds made by clipping 170 millisecond sounds, so the results may not apply to all speech sounds. The authors state that more work is needed before speech-ABRs can be used clinically, including stimulus-specific normative data and criteria for normal and degraded responses.

The paper states that the authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Do not conclude that speech-ABR is ready for clinical use. The study tested 12 normal-hearing adults in a laboratory, and the authors state that ample work is still needed before speech-ABRs can be introduced to clinical practice.