Objective: Many tinnitus patients complain about difficulties regarding speech comprehension. In spite of the high clinical relevance little is known about underlying mechanisms and predisposing factors. Here, we performed an exploratory investigation in a large sample of tinnitus patients to (1) estimate the prevalence of speech comprehension difficulties among tinnitus patients, to (2) compare subjective reports of speech comprehension difficulties with behavioral measurements in a standardized speech comprehension test and to (3) explore underlying mechanisms by analyzing the relationship between speech comprehension difficulties and peripheral hearing function (pure tone audiogram), as well as with co-morbid hyperacusis as a central auditory processing disorder.

Subjects and Methods: Speech comprehension was assessed in 361 tinnitus patients presenting between 07/2012 and 08/2014 at the Interdisciplinary Tinnitus Clinic at the University of Regensburg. The assessment included standard audiological assessments (pure tone audiometry, tinnitus pitch, and loudness matching), the Goettingen sentence test (in quiet) for speech audiometric evaluation, two questions about hyperacusis, and two questions about speech comprehension in quiet and noisy environments (“How would you rate your ability to understand speech?”; “How would you rate your ability to follow a conversation when multiple people are speaking simultaneously?”).

Results: Subjectively-reported speech comprehension deficits are frequent among tinnitus patients, especially in noisy environments (cocktail party situation). 74.2% of all investigated patients showed disturbed speech comprehension (indicated by values above 21.5 dB SPL in the Goettingen sentence test). Subjective speech comprehension complaints (both for general and in noisy environment) were correlated with hearing level and with audiologically-assessed speech comprehension ability. In contrast, co-morbid hyperacusis was only correlated with speech comprehension difficulties in noisy environments, but not with speech comprehension difficulties in general.

Conclusion: Speech comprehension deficits are frequent among tinnitus patients. Whereas speech comprehension deficits in quiet environments are primarily due to peripheral hearing loss, speech comprehension deficits in noisy environments are related to both peripheral hearing loss and dysfunctional central auditory processing. Disturbed speech comprehension in noisy environments might be modulated by a central inhibitory deficit. In addition, attentional and cognitive aspects may play a role.