Psychometrically equivalent Russian speech audiometry materials by male and female talkers

Despite the large number of individuals who speak Russian, only a limited number of high-quality speech audiometry materials are available in a standard dialect of Russian. Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate speech audiometry materials that can be used to measure word recognition and SRT testing in quiet for native speakers of Russian. Familiar monosyllabic and bisyllabic words were digitally recorded by male and female talkers of Russian and subsequently evaluated by native listeners. Using logistic regression, psychometric functions were then calculated for all words. Selected monosyllabic words were digitally adjusted to create word recognition lists which are relatively homogeneous with respect to audibility and psychometric slope. Speech reception threshold materials were developed by selecting twenty-five bisyllabic words with relatively steep psychometric function slopes (12.1%/dB and 9.9 %/dB) and digitally equating their intensity to match the mean PTA of the native listeners. Digital recordings of the resulting psychometrically equivalent speech audiometry materials are available on compact disc.