Korean J Otorhinolaryngol-Head Neck Surg.  2010 May;53(5):290-299. 10.3342/kjorl-hns.2010.53.5.290.

Development of Compact Disks in Speech Audiometry and First Stage Verification for the New Speech Materials

• Noh H
• Chang KH

• KMID: 1722550
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3342/kjorl-hns.2010.53.5.290

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
To standard test method of Korean speech audiometry, we developed an audio compact disk, the KsoM-07 (Korean Society of Otolaryngolgy, Monosyllabic, 2007) word lists and evaluated them for clinical usage.
SUBJECTS AND METHOD
The monitored live voice (MLV) of a female talker was digitally recorded with a Beltone audiometer and the GoldWave program. The calibration for each word was done by calculating the root-mean-square (RMS) at the moving time of 300 ms using MATLAB(R) (7.0 version, The MathWorks, Inc. Natick, Massachusetts, USA) and the GoldWave (v 5.25 GoldWave Inc. St. John's, NL, Canada) program. The discrimination score was measured in 20 normal subjects to obtain psychometric function curve of each word and to compare the homogeneity of two lists. The first verification methods for new speech materials were done by comparing the discrimination scores of the flat type and the descending types at 150 sensorineural hearing loss with similar pure tone threshold.
RESULTS
44% of MLV recording was above +/-3 dB deviation and had to be recalibrated. Two lists showed equal difficulty or homogeneity in normal subjects. Discrimination scores were statistically different among the groups with respect to hearing level and the slope of audiogram.
CONCLUSION
KsoM-07 word lists were relatively homogeneous and showed differences between the descending type and the flat type of hearing loss. Therefore, KsoM-07 word lists can be useful in evaluating the impairment found in the descending type of sensorineural hearing loss as well as in serving as a new speech test material for Korean monosyllabic words.

Keyword

Speech audiometry; Compact disk; Speech intelligibility; Speech discrimination test

MeSH Terms

Audiometry, Speech
Calibration
Compact Disks
Discrimination (Psychology)
Female
Hearing
Hearing Loss
Hearing Loss, Sensorineural
Humans
Massachusetts
Psychometrics
Speech Discrimination Tests
Speech Intelligibility
Voice