Measuring the ability of hearing impaired children to understand connected discourse: a comparison of two methods

Attempts to quantify the understanding of connected discourse have been based on: the number of embedded key words repeated correctly; the intelligibility ratings estimated by a listener; and the number of content-related questions answered correctly. This study was undertaken to compare the use of the latter two methods to measure the ability of hearing impaired children to understand connected discourse. Twenty-five normally hearing and 54 sensorineural hearing impaired Cantonese-speaking children rated how well they could understand a connected discourse passage, and answered content-related questions to show their level of understanding of the same passage. The effect of two different hearing aid frequency responses and two noise conditions on self-ratings and speech scores was also investigated. Both methods of assessment were able to demonstrate effects of hearing loss, frequency response and noise at approximately similar levels of significance. One of the findings from this study was the absence of any effect of testing method on the performance of the listeners to understand connected discourse. Consequently, either method can be used to provide essential information on the level of difficulty a hearing impaired child might experience in understanding connected speech in everyday life.