The German hearing in noise test

Abstract

Objectives

The aims of this study were to develop a German Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) using the same methodology as with previous HINT tests; to develop sentence lists for measuring speech reception thresholds (SRTs); and to determine test–retest reliability and norms for measures obtained under headphones.

Design

The following steps were followed: develop and record sentences, synthesise masking noise, determine the performance-intensity (PI) function, equalise sentence difficulty in the masking noise. Form sentence lists of equal difficulty. Measure SRTs for normal hearing individuals to determine practice/learning effects, test–retest reliability, and norms.

Study Sample

Three groups of adults (median age = 25 years) with average better ear pure-tone averages (PTAs) ≤ 5 dB HL participated.

Results

The 12 20-sentence lists were well-matched phonemically and did not differ significantly in difficulty. Test–retest reliability 95% confidence intervals ranged from 1.3 to 2.5 dB. Norms in quiet and in noise exhibited the same pattern as those for other HINT languages. German norms were approximately 2 dB lower than other languages in the noise conditions.

Conclusions

The German HINT materials are comparable to those for other languages and are partially consistent with recommendations for construction of multilingual speech tests. They can be used for comparing and pooling research results from the international research community.

Keywords:

• Speech test
• HINT
• hearing
• in noise test
• speech perception
• normal hearing
• SRT
• Speech perception
• Speech reception threshold

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Association (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) under Grant number DFG STR 1014/4-1.