Chronic sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is characterizedby an increase in hearing thresholds at basic speech frequencies,which implies deterioration of auditory speech feedback controland, as a result, changes of speech characteristics. A hypothesiswas tested that such deterioration can manifest itself in an increaseof F0, F1, F2 formants of speech vowel in patients with moderateand moderately severe postlingual SNHL. Recordings of elicited speechwere performed for young and middle age women (36-59 years): 7 womenspeakers with moderate SNHL who did not use hearing aids; 5 womenspeakers with moderately severe SNHL who were hearing aids usersbut were not using them during the recordings; a control group of12 normally hearing women speakers. An assessment of F0, F1 andF2 of stressed vowels [a], , [u] and calculations of vowels' centralizationindices-vowel space area, vowel formant centralization ratio andthe second formant ratio (F2i/F2u), were performed. All the studiedspectral indices in groups of patients with postlingual SNHL weresimilar to those in the control group, no statistically reliabledifferences were revealed.
