Elaboración de una versión reducida de las listas de frases en español (vr-LFE) para evaluar la percepción del habla con ruido

Abstract

This article presents, a short version of the ‘listas de frases en español’ (vr-LFE; “Lists of Phrases in Spanish”) to evaluate speech perception in noise. The original version is an adaptation of the SPIN (Speech Perception in Noise) test for the English language. The original LFE consists of 6 lists, each of them including 25 high-predictability sentences and 25 low-predictability sentences. The difference between the correct recognition scores on the two types of sentences provides an estimation of the effective use of linguistic context (semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic information) by the listener in the speech perception process. In the present work, 60 sentences were selected from an initial pool of 300 sentences. These 60 sentences were arranged in 5 lists of 12 sentences each (6 high-predictability and 6 low-predictability sentences). This version preserves the same characteristics of reliability (equivalence among the lists) and validity (sensibility to the effects of sentence context and to the signal-to-noise ratio) as the original version, but considerably reduces the time needed for its administration. These lists can be used to evaluate speech perception difficulties in noise in older listeners with mild-to-moderate hearing loss (presbycusis), with or without mild cognitive impairment, and in non-native listeners with different degrees of linguistic competence.