Comparison of various modes of presenting sentence materials in tests of speech perception in noise

This study compares alternative modes of presenting sentences in testing situations where noise is employed and where the required response is only one word in the sentence. The purpose is to establish the extent to which contextual information is transmitted to the listener in the following four presentation modes: (1) acoustical presentation of the test word under noise and written presentation of the rest of the sentence (mode W); (2) acoustical presentation of sentence and test word under uniform noise (mode A); (3) superposition of the previous two modes (mode B); and (4) acoustical presentation of the test word under noise in one ear, immediately following the presentation of the rest of the sentence without noise in the other ear (mode C). Modes B and C are found to be essentially equivalent to mode W. When mode A is used, the intelligibility of the test word is substantially lower than with mode W, especially at low signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios. These results are particularly relevant to testing situations where the primary intent is to assess the utilization of contextual information in perceiving speech.