The Effect of Age, Type of Noise, and Cochlear Implants on Adaptive Sentence-in-Noise Task

Adaptive tests of sentences in noise mimic the challenge of daily listening situations. The aims of the present study were to validate an adaptive version of the HeBio sentence test on normal hearing (NH) adults; to evaluate the effect of age and type of noise on speech reception threshold in noise (SRTn); and to test it on prelingual adults with cochlear implants (CI). In Experiment 1, 45 NH young adults listened to two lists accompanied by four-talker babble noise (4TBN). Experiment 2 presented the sentences amidst 4TBN or speech-shaped noise (SSN) to 80 participants in four age groups. In Experiment 3, 18 CI adult users with prelingual bilateral profound hearing loss performed the test amidst SSN, along with HeBio sentences and monosyllabic words in quiet and forward digits span. The main findings were as follows: SRTn for NH participants was normally distributed and had high test-retest reliability; SRTn was lower among adolescents and young adults than middle-aged and older adults, and were better for SSN than 4TBN; SRTn for CI users was higher and more variant than for NH and correlated with speech perception tests in quiet, digits span, and age at first CI. This suggests that the adaptive HeBio can be implemented in clinical and research settings with various populations.