Development of Digitized Mandarin Paediatric Speech Perception Test Materials for Malaysian Children

Abstract

Digitized Mandarin paediatric speech perception tests are limited in Malaysia for measuring outcomes among children fitted with amplification devices. Mandarin speech perception tests from other countries may not be suitable to be used in Malaysia due to regional vocabulary differences. This study aimed to develop digitized test materials to test Mandarin-speaking preschool children in Malaysia. This is a two-phased cross-sectional study where Mandarin words (n=113) were gathered with test item pictures developed and tested on 40 Mandarin-speaking children (aged 2;0 to 5;11 years old) with normal hearing in Study I. A total of 80 of 113 words with high familiarity among children were selected in Study I. In Study II, digital recordings of the words was conducted, followed by acoustic analysis, and sound quality evaluation. In total, 94 out of the 480 recorded word tokens were excluded in acoustic analysis. The remaining 386 tokens received good quality rating by three professionals. Validation of the recorded word tokens and pictures to select the final test items involved 20 Mandarin-speaking young adults in Study II. A total of 160 tokens were selected as final items and all pictures corresponding to these test items were validated as suitable representation of the test items. In conclusion, digitally recorded stimuli and pictures have been developed for a Mandarin speech perception test appropriate for Mandarin-speaking pre-school children in Malaysia. Ongoing research includes collecting normative data for the test and future research involves evaluating the test application in local audiology clinics.