Application of Word Intelligibility Test by Picture Identification to Hearing-Impaired Children

Abstract

This work is a part of the research on standardization of speech audiometry for hearingimpaired children.In the first phase, the experiment was made on children in nursery classes (aged 3-6 years) at a school for the deaf in order to evaluate a test word list and the procedure for word intelligibility test by picture identification. From the results of the experiment the following suggestions were made:1) The test word list should be consisted of concrete nouns which can be pictorially presented.2) A test sheet with 6 pictures is used for every test word. Therefore 25 test sheets are needed to 25 test words.3) Before the test, it is necessary to ascertain whether each test word is within the recognition vocabulary of each subject.In the second phase, according to the first experiment a test word list was made, and the intelligibility test was carried out on 90 children, aged 3-15 years at a school for the deaf. The results were as followed:1) Mean hearing loss more than 95dB (ASA-1951) was associated with lower score of this test.2) This test was easier than the monosyllabic intelligibility test (67-list of Japan Audiological Society) which has been widely used in Japan, and the test scores distributed over the wider range than those of 67-list. Therefore this test can be utilized for evaluating the speech recognition ability of severely impaired hearing children.