Audiologists refer to the sounds of human speech (phonemes), plotted on an audiogram, as what?

The Speech Banana is a term used to describe the area where the phonemes, or sounds of human speech, appear on an audiogram. When the phonemes are plotted out on the audiogram they take the shape of a banana. Therefore, audiologists and speech-language pathologists refer to that area as the speech banana.

As a result, hearing professionals are most concerned with hearing impairment that happens within the region of the speech banana. Irrespective of whether the person is old or young, if they’re having trouble hearing sounds within that frequency and volume range, they are almost definitively having difficulty hearing speech, and thus have problems communicating effectively with other people.

The speech banana is considered so important to healthy hearing that many school districts have required audiograms for their students so that they can detect and address hearing problems early that may be affecting their ability to communicate. Since this range of sounds is so critical to communications it is the range that most hearing aids are tuned and programmed to perform best in.