Development of Korean Standard Monosyllabic Word Lists for Adults (KS-MWL-A)

Abstract

Word recognition test (WRT) presented at the most comfortable loudness level can provide valuable informations for diagnosing the degree of communication disability, prescribing hearing instruments, planning aural rehabilitation and speech therapy, and determination of site of lesions. The purpose of this study was to develop the Korean standard monosyllabic word lists for adults (KS-MWL-A). Considering the criteria given by the literatures such as phonetic balance, equal range of phonetic composition of speech, words in common usage, and words' familiarity, etc, first 1,456 candidating monosyllabic words were selected. Those were extracted from the conventional lists, the first and second graded familiar words, and the words that were included in the dictionary. In order to reflect the actual frequencies of syllable in colloquialism, initial and final consonants' and vowels' frequencies in everyday dialogue were investigated and controlled. The KS-MWL-A was developed with selected final 200 monosyllabic words, followed by examinations of psychometric functions and homogeneity of the stimulus twice and corrections referred by the experts. The first and the second psychometric function tests were performed to 30 young adults (mean age：22) and to 48 young adults (mean age：21.5), respectively at 12 steps of intensity from-10 to 45 dBHL in 5 dBHL steps and psychometric function curves were obtained using the logistic regression equation. The mean slope was 8.

<p>Auditory Working Memory Explains Variance in Speech Recognition in Older Listeners Under Adverse Listening Conditions</p>

“…Inclusion criteria for this older population were passing score (≥27/30) on the Korean version of Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE-KC; Lee et al 27 ); this cutoff score was set to rule out any possible mild cognitive impairment while balancing between sensitivity and specificity of the MMSE-KC test. 28 In addition, participants needed 90% or better word recognition score (WRS) using the Korean Standard Monosyllabic Word Lists for Adults (KS-MWL-A) 29 at the better ear, and pure-tone hearing thresholds of the better ear were required to be within the 95th percentile of hearing threshold distributions obtained from otologically screened Korean older population according to ISO 8253-1 (2010) across all frequencies at octave-scale. 30 To isolate the effect of auditory working memory on speech recognition in older listeners, the participant population and experimental settings were controlled as above, and the presentation level was adjusted to the preferred listening level (range 65 to 80 dB SPL, median 65 dB SPL) for each participant to ensure audibility.…”

Error Patterns Analysis of Hearing Aid and Cochlear Implant Users as a Function of Noise

“…We need to change the viewpoint on such scores. If clinicians focus on incorrect responses instead of the correct responses and then analyze the error pattern of the incorrect response, the specific characteristics of the hearing impaired population will be profiled [ 15 ]. Baddeley [ 10 ] argued that overall correct percent did vary and error patterns for the incorrect answers differed according to the degree of hearing loss.…”

Test-Retest Reliability of Word Recognition Score Using Korean Standard Monosyllabic Word Lists for Adults as a Function of the Number of Test Words

“…Each list has 50 words recorded by a native Korean speaker who was a professional announcer. The monosyllabic words were selected based on word familiarity, phonetical dissimilarity, normal sampling of Korean speech sounds, and homogeneity with respect to intelligibility [ 1 ]. Thirty-six bisyllabic words updated by Cho, et al [ 15 ] recorded by a native Korean speaker were used for testing speech recognition threshold (SRT).…”

“…Generally, several monosyllabic word lists (MWL) with a similar level of difficulty are used to get the WRS. Korean MWLs for adults (MWL-A) were recently developed [ 1 ] and selected as a Korean standard (KS) for speech audiometry [ 2 ]. The KS-MWL-A is widely used in many hearing clinics, hearing aid centers, and auditory rehabilitation centers in Korea.…”

“…It is well known that parameters affecting WRS include a number of test words, stimulus presentation level and mode, difficulty level of word lists, etc. Although few studies [ 1 3 12 13 ] examined test-retest reliability of Korean WRS for adults, their data were not enough to clearly interpret retest results of the KS-MWL-A with respect to aforementioned parameters, because of differences between old and newly developed word lists, small number of subjects, skewed distribution of WRSs, or homogeneity problem in age.…”