Self-assessment of communication skills: toward the development of a new speech audiometric tool

This investigation was carried out in an effort to characterize differences between groups of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners on a speech perception test based on the theory of signal detection (TSD). TSD allows the quantification of two performance measures designed to evaluate listeners' ability to assess the accuracy of their own identifications and their level of confidence in the self-assessment task. It is hoped that these measures will provide a meaningful way to quantify communication skills beyond the percent correct word recognition score routinely measured in the audiology clinic. Nonparametric indices of self-assessment ability and confidence level, P(A) and B, respectively, were measured for ten normal-hearing and ten hearing-impaired subjects at two signal-to-noise ratios (S/N). In addition, percent correct word recognition scores (%C) were measured. Results indicated that %C differed across groups and across S/Ns. In contrast, P(A) and B differed as a function of S/N but did not differ between hearing-impaired and normal-hearing groups.