Development of a Dutch matrix sentence test to assess speech intelligibility in noise

Abstract

Objective: A Dutch matrix sentence test was developed and evaluated. A matrix test is a speech-in-noise test based on a closed speech corpus of sentences derived from words from fixed categories. An example is “Mark gives five large flowers.” Design: This report consists of the development of the speech test and a multi-center evaluation. Study sample: Forty-five normal-hearing participants. Results: The developed matrix test has a speech reception threshold in stationary noise of − 8.4 dB with an inter-list standard deviation of 0.2 dB. The slope of the intelligibility function is 10.2 %/dB and this is slightly lower than that of similar tests in other languages (12.6 to 17.1 %/dB). Conclusions: The matrix test is now also available in Dutch and can be used in both Flanders and the Netherlands.

Key Words::

• Speech-in-noise
• speech test
• speech intelligibility
• normative data

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank E. Boon and M. Krone, E. Visser, M. Nelissen, and R. Maas for their contributions and assistance in the evaluation measurements. We also thank our colleagues from Hörtech and the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg for the cooperation in the production of the test material, and B. Kollmeier for his valuable suggestions. Authors Rolph Houben and Jan Koopman contributed equally to this work and are considered joint first authors.

Note

Declaration of interest: The authors report no declarations of interest.

Notes

1. We used a generalized linear model with the following link function: log((p-a)/(1-p)). In this equation p represents the probability that the sentence is correctly repeated by the listener.