Brazilian Portuguese speech material and its application in occupational audiology

Brazilian Portuguese speech test material consisting of nine monosyllabic 25-word lists was developed and digitally recorded on one channel of a compact disk with a speech-weighted modulated broadband noise on the other channel. Speech recognition functions in quiet and in noise, with word and phoneme scores, were obtained, and normative speech recognition data were standardized by determination of the psychometric function in 21 normally-hearing volunteers in quiet, and in 30 normally-hearing subjects in noise. The homogeneity of the nine lists was investigated in phoneme recognition data with 30 normally-hearing subjects. Speech recognition functions in quiet and in noise, with word and phoneme scores, were obtained in 65 noise-exposed workers. These results were very close to normative data, when tested in quiet, but significantly worse when tested in noise. It is concluded that the speech test material can be useful for estimating the communication performance of noise-exposed workers.