Speech audiometry for children and subjective probability of Polish words

Word lists used for speech audiometry should fulfill a number of conditions in order that the results of hearing tests be unambiguous and directly interpretable not only in terms of possible hearing loss but also in terms of the neurolinguistic decoding process. In order to construct a proper word list, it was decided to attempt to estimate the subjective probability of word occurrence in schoolchildren. Nine different lists of over 300 words each were prepared, containing words of all assumed degrees of familiarity. In the preliminary stage, the lists were presented to 600 children in primary and secondary schools. The children were asked to mark each word with a number indicating their relative familiarity with the word. The answers were examined for homogeneity.