Final answer:
A person with profound hearing loss will struggle to understand speech without hearing aids, particularly higher frequencies and female voices. Conversational speech is often indistinct for them, and understanding requires significantly louder speech.
Step-by-step explanation:
If a person has a profound degree of hearing loss and is in an environment without hearing aids (HAs), the effects on speech recognition can be significant. Without amplification, a person with such a hearing loss will mainly perceive only the lowest frequencies and will struggle to understand speech, which often seems indistinct due to the inadequate perception of higher frequencies. Most conversational speech falls within a frequency and intensity region that includes higher pitches, such as those found in female voices; therefore, a person with a 60-phon hearing impairment might find it especially difficult to understand women speaking at normal conversational levels.
Notably, we do not typically use our full range of hearing for everyday activities such as conversation or music appreciation, with frequencies above 8000 Hz being rare in these contexts. Nonetheless, those with a hearing loss at all frequencies experiencing 60-phon or higher reductions may be unaware of their situation until tested. This level of loss can result in challenges, as conversations would need to be much louder than standard levels, and speech would still appear unclear.