Development and validation of an automatic speech-in-noise screening test by telephone

Abstract

To meet the need for an objective self-test for hearing screening. a new Dutch speech-in-noise test was developed. Digit triplets were used as speech material. The test was made fully automatic, was controlled by a computer, and can be done by telephone. It measures the speech reception threshold (triplet SRT(n)) using an adaptive procedure, in about 3 min. Our experiments showed no significant influence of telephone type or listening environment. Measurement errors were within 1 dB. which makes the test accurate. In additional experiments with hearing-impaired subjects (76 ears of 38 listeners), the new test was compared to the existing sentence SRT(n) test of Plomp and Mimpen, which is considered to be the standard. The correlation between both SRT(n)s was 0.866. As expected, correlations between the triplet SRT(n) test by telephone and average pure-tone thresholds are somewhat lower: 0.732 for PTA(0,5,1,2), and 0.770 for PTA(0,5,2,4). When proper SRT(n) values were chosen for distinguishing between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects, the triplet SRT(n) test was found to have a sensitivity of 0.91 and a specificity of 0.93.

Noise induced hearing loss and other hearing complaints among musicians of symphony orchestras

“…For speech-in-noise testing, we applied a stand-alone version of the telephone test (Smits et al 2004), installed on a laptop computer. The SRT test uses an adaptive procedure, a simple one-up one-down procedure with a step size of 2 dB.…”

“…moderate hearing). No participants scored higher than ¡1.4, indicating poor hearing as deWned by Smits et al (2004).…”

Telehealth in audiology: The need and potential to reach underserved communities

“…With the asynchronous automated protocol, large scale hearing screening can be accomplished with a local facilitator tasked with patient scheduling, taking and recording relevant case history, initiating and monitoring equipment with automated protocols, and forwarding all pertinent information especially when the decision support software in the automated programme indicates that referral is necessary. Alternately, self hearing screening services may be available over the telephone or Internet as recently reported for screening adults and adolescents in the Netherlands (Smits, Kapteyn & Houtgast, 2004;Smits, Merkus & Houtgast, 2006). The speech-in-noise screening test uses triple digit stimuli presented in an adaptive paradigm and can be done quickly and with results comparable to other speech in noise tests 13 (Smits, Kapteyn & Houtgast, 2004;Smits, Merkus & Houtgast, 2006).…”

“…Alternately, self hearing screening services may be available over the telephone or Internet as recently reported for screening adults and adolescents in the Netherlands (Smits, Kapteyn & Houtgast, 2004;Smits, Merkus & Houtgast, 2006). The speech-in-noise screening test uses triple digit stimuli presented in an adaptive paradigm and can be done quickly and with results comparable to other speech in noise tests 13 (Smits, Kapteyn & Houtgast, 2004;Smits, Merkus & Houtgast, 2006). Obviously, the greatest benefit of this technique is accessibility since hearing screening may be only a phone call away.…”

Development and evaluation of Polish digit triplet test for auditory screening

“…They have been used for speech intelligibility measurements and for clinical purposes (Fletcher, 1929;Pruszewicz et al, 1994a, b), auditory screening (Smits et al, 2004;Wagener et al, 2005a) and in studies on the influence of speech context on intelligibility (Miller et al, 1951;Kalikow et al, 1977). They have been also used for a study devoted to pronunciation differences between native and non-native American English speakers (Schmidt-Nielsen, 1989).…”