In the present study, speech‐recognition performance was measured in four hearing‐impaired subjects and twelve normal hearers. The normal hearers were divided into four groups of three subjects each. Speech‐recognition testing for the normal hearers was accomplished in a background of spectrally shaped noise in which the noise was shaped to produce masked thresholds identical to the quiet thresholds of one of the hearing‐impaired subjects. The question addressed in this study is whether normal hearers with a hearing loss simulated through a shaped masking noise demonstrate speech‐recognition difficulties similar to those of listeners with actual hearing impairment. Regarding overall percent‐correct scores, the results indicated that two of the four hearing‐impaired subjects performed better than their corresponding subgroup of noise‐masked normal hearers, whereas the other two impaired listeners performed like the noise‐masked normal listeners. A gross analysis of the types of errors made suggested that subjects with actual and simulated losses frequently made different types of errors.