Development of a Mandarin monosyllable test material with homogenous items (I): homogeneity selection

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech Science
• Linguistics

Background:

• Developing standardized speech recognition test materials is crucial for accurate hearing assessments.
• Existing Mandarin monosyllabic test lists may lack sufficient phonemic balance and item homogeneity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create succinct, phonemically balanced Mandarin monosyllabic recognition test lists.
• To ensure good item homogeneity for reliable speech recognition testing.

Main Methods:

• Developed a Phoneme Allocation Table based on Chinese phoneme distribution.
• Selected 489 monosyllables, organized into 30 lists (25 per list).
• Applied logistic regression and specific criteria (R value > 0.9, slope 2-12%/dB, threshold -8 to 10 dB HL) to screen for homogenous items.

Main Results:

• Established a framework of 30 phonemically balanced monosyllabic lists.
• Screened out 342 monosyllables demonstrating good homogeneity.
• These selected monosyllables can form highly sensitive test lists.

Conclusions:

• A homogeneity selection process is effective for creating uniform Mandarin monosyllabic test lists.
• The identified monosyllables provide a robust resource for Chinese Mandarin speech recognition testing.