Development and validation of an automatic speech-in-noise screening test by telephone

To meet the need for an objective self-test for hearing screening, a new Dutch speech-in-noise test was developed. Digit triplets were used as speech material. The test was made fully automatic, was controlled by a computer, and can be done by telephone. It measures the speech reception threshold (triplet SRTn) using an adaptive procedure, in about 3 min. Our experiments showed no significant influence of telephone type or listening environment. Measurement errors were within 1 dB, which makes the test accurate. In additional experiments with hearing-impaired subjects (76 ears of 38 listeners), the new test was compared to the existing sentence SRTn test of Plomp and Mimpen, which is considered to be the standard. The correlation between both SRTns was 0.866. As expected, correlations between the triplet SRTn test by telephone and average pure-tone thresholds are somewhat lower: 0.732 for PTA0.5, 1, 2, and 0.770 for PTA0.5, 1, 2,4. When proper SRTn values were chosen for distinguishing between normal-hearing and hearingimpaired subjects, the triplet SRTn test was found to have a sensitivity of 0.91 and a specificity of 0.93. Sumario Para satisfacer la necesidad de un test objetivo de autoevaluacio´n para identificacio´n de problemas auditivos, se desarrollo´ una nueva prueba holandesa de lenguaje en ruido. Se utilizaron cifras de tres di´gitos como material logoaudiome´trico. El test se hizo totalmente automa´tico, controlado por una computadora y realizable por tele´fono. Mide el umbral de recepcio´n del lenguaje (SRTn triplet) en 3 minutos, utilizando un procedimiento adaptativo. Nuestras pruebas no muestran una influencia significativa del tipo de tele´fono o del ambiente de la prueba. Los errores de medicio´n no variaron en ma´s de 1 dB, lo que hace que la prueba sea exacta. En experimentos adicionales con sujetos hipoacu´sicos (76 oi´dos de 36 sujetos), la nueva prueba se comparo´ con el test de SRTn con frases de Plomp y Mimpen, considerado como el esta´ndar de referencia. La correlacio´n entre los SRTnfue de 0.866. Como se esperaba, la correlacio´n entre la prueba telefo´nica de SRTncon di´gitos triples y el promedio de umbrales tonales puros es un poco ma´s baja: 0.732 para el PTA0.5, 1, 2 y 0.770 para el PTA0.5, 1, 2, 4. Cuando se escogieron los valores apropiados de SRTnpara distinguir entre sujetos normo-oyentes e hipoacu´sicos, la prueba de SRTncon di´gitos triples demostro´ una sensibilidad de 0.91 y una especificidad de 0.93.