The Brazilian Portuguese Hearing in Noise Test

Abstract

The hearing in noise test (HINT) is currently available in several languages (Nilsson et al., 1994). The similarity of the procedures and the resulting similarity of the test materials makes the measures obtained with the HINT comparable across languages. Individuals from both genders, in the age range of 18Á50 years, with hearing thresholds 20 dB HL or better at the octave frequencies from 250 to 8000 Hz, for both ears, who were native speakers of the Portuguese spoken in Brazil participated in this study. Method and Results Preparation of test materialsInitially, 1700 sentences were compiled via three different methods: (1) A survey of the corpus of Brazilian Portuguese available in the CHILDES (child language data exchange system) database was completed (Murari, 2004). The 50 000-word list was assessed by speech pathologists from various states of Brazil, and the words agreed upon by all participants were considered*regional vocabulary that might have a confusing meaning in some regions was excluded (Costa, 1997). (2) The Latin American Spanish HINT materials were analysed. (3) Spontaneous dialogue with daily phrases and vocabulary for subjects whose native language is Brazilian Portuguese, regardless of their background or education level, was recorded.After the sentences were selected, 10 subjects were asked to assess the familiarity of the sentences, grading them on a scale of 0 to 7, scoring the most familiar and natural as 7 and the most artificial as 0. Finally, of the 1700 sentences, the sentences with scores of 6 and 7 were further evaluated, and 800 were selected for use in the study. Two centers participated in the research: Universidade de Sao Paulo, Bauru (USP) and Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas (UNICAMP). The selected sentences were recorded at House Ear Institute, Los Angeles by a professional Brazilian voice actor. Estimation of the performance-intensity functionTwelve subjects were evaluated (six at USP and six at UNI-CAMP) in order to estimate the performance-intensity (PI) function. From the existing speech material, six lists of 50 sentences, totaling 300 sentences (three lists for each center), and a masking noise with the same sentence frequency spectrum were produced. Noise intensity was constant at 65 dBA, with the following variations of signal to noise ratios (S/N ratios):(7 dB, (4 dB, and (2 dB, for all lists tested. The correct words were counted, and this number resulted in an intelligibility percentage, for each list, at every S/N ratio. The average slope of the PI function for the two centers was 11.4% per dB change in S/N ratio. Equalization of sentence difficultySentence equalization from the S/N ratio corresponding to 70% of speech intelligibility was subdivided into three rounds with 20 subjects for each round (10 from USP and 10 from UNICAMP). For each round, 16 lists containing 50 sentences each, totaling 800 sentences (eight lists for each center), were used. On the first round, the noise intensity was fixed at 65 dBA, and the S/N ratio for all sentences presen...

Speech Perception in Children Under Noisy Situations

“…Tendo em conta que, atualmente a maior parte dos testes disponíveis para a avaliação da percepção da fala em deficientes auditivos foram padronizados em um idioma que não o Português Brasileiro, o desenvolvimento do HINT em Português Brasileiro é uma evolução na avaliação da percepção da fala, fornecendo parâmetros de análise tanto clínica quanto para pesquisa (9).…”

Correlação entre percepção de fala e zumbido antes e após o uso de amplificação

“…To assess the speech perception of the subjects, the HINT (Hearing in Noise Test) was performed, adapted to Brazilian Portuguese (12) . The HINT is an adaptive test which requested the individual`s recognition and repetition of simple sentences in quiet and in noise.…”

“…Given that the main goal of amplification is to restore the intelligibility of speech, it is very important to realize that perception tests speaks to evaluate the performance of hearing aids, especially in noisy conditions since they simulate more real situations (11) . To better assess the individual's performance in noise, speech perception tests, such as the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) have been used in some research centers in Brazil (12) . There are indications for deficit in speech recognition in individuals with tinnitus, regardless of any other associated auditory perception (13) .…”

Percepção de fala: desempenho de indivíduos usuários de aparelho de amplificação sonora individual com microfone direcional

“…Assessment of speech perception with the Brazil-HINT (17) was performed in three stages: without HA (V1), with HA and the omnidirectional microphone activated (V2), and with HA and the directional microphone activated (V3).…”

“…The speech reception threshold is defined as the presentation level necessary for the individual to recognize correctly 50% of the speech material. The HINT was translated into Brazilian Portuguese and published in 2008 (17) and can be used to compare the performance of patients with different HAs or the performance of different groups of individuals.…”