The development of the University of Jordan word recognition test

Abstract

Objective: To develop and validate a digitally recorded speech test battery to assess speech perception in Jordanian Arabic-speaking adults.

Design: Selected stimuli were digitally recorded and were divided into four lists of 25 words each. Speech audiometry was completed for all listeners. Participants were divided into two equal groups of 30 listeners each with equal male to female ratio. The first group of participants completed speech reception thresholds (SRTs) and word recognition testing on each of the four lists using a fixed intensity. The second group of listeners was tested on each of the four lists at different intensity levels in order to obtain the performance-intensity function. Study sample: Sixty normal-hearing listeners in the age range of 19–25 years. All participants were native speakers of Jordanian Arabic. Results: Results revealed that there were no significant differences between SRTs and pure tone average. Additionally, there were no differences across lists at multiple intensity levels. Conclusions: In general, the current study was successful in producing recorded speech materials for Jordanian Arabic population. This suggests that the speech stimuli generated by this study are suitable for measuring speech recognition in Jordanian Arabic-speaking listeners.

Key Words:

• Medical audiology
• speech perception
• behavioural measure
• instrumentation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Siham Ayasrah for her help in participants’ recruitment and data collection. This research study was funded by the Deanship of Research at the University of Jordan.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.