Development of a mandarin monosyllable test material with homogenous items (II): Lists equivalence evaluation

Abstract

Conclusions: A set of Chinese Mandarin monosyllable test lists with good reliability and sensitivity was established. Objectives. The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the equivalence of a group of monosyllable lists. Methods: A genetic algorithm was adopted to reorganize the material based on the Phoneme Allocation Table; 10 lists with 25 monosyllabic test items in each were generated. A two-factor design was used for the equivalence evaluation test. A total of 80 normal-hearing and native Mandarin-speaking university students (40 males and 40 females) participated in the trial. Every subject was tested with all 10 lists in sequence at 5 presentation levels (–5, 0, 5, 10, and 15 dB HL). Performance-intensity (P-I) function of each list was fit before P-I curve slope and recognition threshold were calculated. Results: Equivalence evaluation results indicated good psychophysical equivalence between the 10 lists except for list 2. List 9 has a reused item. After the elimination of lists 2 and 9, multivariate ANOVA revealed a good equivalence between the remaining eight lists (p = 0.136). The mean threshold of eight equivalent lists was 10.32 ± 0.38 dB HL, while the mean slope was 5.00 ± 0.29%/dB.

Keywords::

• Speech audiometry
• psychophysical equivalence

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Hi-Tech Research and Development Program of China (863) (#2007AA02Z150), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (#30871398, 30730040, 30830104), National Eleventh Scientific Program (2008BAI50B08, 2007BAI18B12, 2007BAI18B14), and Beijing Nature Science Technology Major Project (7070002). We greatly appreciate assistance by Prof. Tsai Kuen-Shian at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Yang-Ming University in Chinese Taiwan.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.