Purpose
The aim of the study was to examine the precision of forced-choice (closed-set) and open-ended (open-set) word recognition (WR) tasks for identifying a change in hearing.
Method
WR performance for closed-set (4 and 6 choices) and open-set tasks was obtained from 70 listeners with normal hearing. Speech recognition was degraded by presenting monosyllabic words in noise (−8, −4, 0, and 4 signal-to-noise ratios) or processed by a sine wave vocoder (2, 4, 6, and 8 channels).
Results
The 2 degraded speech understanding conditions yielded similarly shaped, monotonically increasing psychometric functions with the closed-set tasks having shallower slopes and higher scores than the open-set task for the same listening condition. Fitted psychometric functions to the average data were the input to a computer simulation conducted to assess the ability of each task to identify a change in hearing. Individual data were also analyzed using 95% confidence intervals for significant changes in scores for words and phonemes. These analyses found the following for the most to least efficient condition: open-set (phoneme), open-set (word), closed-set (6 choices), and closed-set (4 choices).
Conclusions
Closed-set WR testing has distinct advantages for implementation, but its poorer precision for identifying a change than open-set WR testing must be considered.
Nearly all of the pure-tone average-spondee threshold differences in functional hearing loss are attributable to references for calibration for 0 dB HL for tones and speech, which are based on detection and recognition, respectively. The recognition threshold for spondees is roughly 9 dB higher than the speech detection threshold; persons feigning a loss, who base loss magnitude on loudness, do not consider this difference. Furthermore, the dynamic loudness model was more accurate than the static model.
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