Speech-in-noise tests for multilingual hearing screening and diagnostics1

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech-language pathology
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Hearing loss diagnosis and self-screening are crucial for timely intervention.
• Existing speech-in-noise tests may lack multilingual applicability.
• The HearCom project established quality standards for speech intelligibility tests.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare newly developed multilingual speech-in-noise tests (Russian, Turkish, Spanish) with established HearCom tests.
• To evaluate the suitability of these tests for hearing self-screening and diagnostics.
• To assess cross-language comparability of speech intelligibility functions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Digit Triplet Test and Matrix Test formats with spoken numbers or sentences in background noise.
• Estimated speech reception threshold (SRT) as the signal-to-noise ratio for 50% speech intelligibility.
• Applied a consistent model function for cross-language comparison of speech intelligibility functions in normal-hearing listeners.

Main Results:

• Reference speech intelligibility functions for the new Digit Triplet Test and Matrix Test versions showed high comparability with HearCom tests.
• The developed tests adhere to HearCom minimum quality standards.
• Language- and speaker-dependent factors require compensation for optimal cross-language comparability.

Conclusions:

• Multiple complementary multilingual tests for hearing screening and diagnostics are now available.
• These tests, developed under HearCom standards, exhibit high cross-language comparability.
• The Matrix Test maintained consistent syntax and linguistic complexity across languages, ensuring methodological standardization.