Reliability and sensitivity of paired comparisons and category rating in children

Children's subjective judgments of speech clarity using the methods of paired comparisons and category rating were evaluated in this investigation. Eighty children with normal hearing between the ages of 4 and 8 years judged the clarity of sentences that were systematically bandpass-filtered using conditions that increased intelligibility as estimated by the Articulation Index. Subjects were classified into four age groups (4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-8-year age groups) with 20 subjects per group. With use of materials and training methods suitable for children, judgments were obtained via the two psychophysical procedures (10 subjects per age group for each procedure). Results indicated that children 5 years of age and older were able to make reliable clarity judgments using either procedure; however, the method of paired comparisons was more sensitive than category rating in detecting differences between the bandpass-filtered conditions.