Brain, Digital, & Learning

 Open access, Peer Reviewed

Indexed in KCI

pISSN 2384-2474
eISSN 2586-7490

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Multisensory Speech Processing in Adults with Normal Hearing and Hearing Loss: A Preliminary EEG Study

1Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
2Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University

Correspondence to Hye Yoon Seol, seol.helena@ewha.ac.kr

Brain, Digital, & Learning. Volume 16, Number 1, 1‒12, March 2026. https://doi.org/10.31216/BDL.2026.16.1.1
Received on February 25, 2026, Revised on March 31, 2026, Accepted on March 31, 2026, Published on March 31, 2026.
Copyright © 2026 Institute of Brain·AI based Education, Korea National University of Education. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Studies have shown improvements in speech understanding and quality of life with the use of hearing devices. However, even with that improvement, individuals do not always show the same performance in real-world communication settings. Considering that the communication process involves multisensory integration, this study examined speech recognition performance and brain activity in adults with normal hearing (NH) and hearing loss (HL) in auditory only (AO), visual only (VO), and audiovisual (AV) conditions. Twenty adults with NH and 20 adults with HL completed a speech recognition test while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded in AO, VO, and AV. Power spectral density values were analyzed for the delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma bands. The NH group showed significantly better speech performance than the HL group in AO and AV, while the HL group showed significantly better performance in VO. Regarding EEG characteristics, significant condition effects were observed in the theta and alpha bands in the left hemisphere and in the delta, theta, and alpha bands in the right hemisphere. A significant group-by-condition interaction was observed for the gamma band in the left hemisphere, with the HL group showing greater activity in VO and AV. The findings suggest that multisensory speech processing differs according to both sensory modality and hearing status, and visual input may play an important role in individuals with HL.
Keywords

Hearing loss, Electroencephalography, Multimodal integration

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