Final answer:
A person with 60-phon hearing loss will mainly perceive lower frequencies, struggling with speech recognition, especially understanding higher-pitched voices like those of women. Amplifying sound may not suffice for clarity, and assistive devices or cochlear implants might be necessary for effective communication.
Step-by-step explanation:
A person with a moderate degree of hearing loss without hearing aids (HAs) will face significant challenges in speech recognition, especially if the hearing loss is around 60 phons. Due to the physiology of the ear and the nature of auditory perception, individuals with such hearing impairments tend to only hear lower frequencies, making it hard to discern speech, which contains a wide range of frequencies. Conversational speech typically falls within a certain frequency and intensity range, and the absence of higher frequencies means that understanding speech becomes difficult. This is exacerbated when trying to comprehend female voices, which generally have higher pitch and frequency content.
Moreover, even if the speech's volume is increased, it may still sound indistinct to the person with hearing loss because simply amplifying sound does not restore the clarity of higher frequencies. Thus, speech recognition is likely to be poor, resulting in challenges with communication in everyday life. For effective communication, a person with this level of hearing loss would typically require sound amplification and possibly assistive listening devices such as hearing aids, or in severe cases, technologies like cochlear implants for those with nonfunctional cochleae can be considered, though not all types of hearing loss are amenable to such treatment.