Development of Macedonian monosyllabic and disyllabic tests for speech audiometry

Abstract

The aim of the study was to develop Macedonian monosyllabic and disyllabic tests for speech audiometry, to record the speech materials, and to conduct clinical validation of the tests. The following criteria were applied: word familiarity, phonetic balance, and homogeneity of audibility. Clinical validation was conducted on a sample of 30 normal hearing subjects, aged 18 to 30 years. We developed four open-set tests for speech threshold and suprathreshold testing in quiet. The tests contain two word lists with 50 monosyllabic words and two word lists with 36 disyllabic words. Each word was introduced by a carrier phrase. Psychometric function slope from 20% to 80% correct recognition for all words was 5%/ dB. The difference between the presentation levels at which the subjects repeated all the words was ≤ 4 dB. Developed phonetically balanced word lists have relatively steep psychometric function slope and they are homogeneous in terms of the audibility