The Development of Two Speech Based Tests of Central Auditory Function for Australian Use

Abstract

The Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test and Dichotic Sentence Identification (DSI) test are chiefly used to assess central auditory function. These tests are reportedly more tolerant of hearing loss than other measures and used together, provide analogous but differing measures of central auditory function which can be administered within an acceptable time frame. The purpose of this study was to generate and evaluate an Australian version of the DSI test and the SSI test. The test materials were trialed on younger and older normal hearing adults whose first language was Australian English. Results show near perfect performance for young adults using comfortable listening levels while older adults showed greater variability in performance. In addition, there was decreasing performance with age on both test measures for the left ear. These results were compared with those reported for the original SSI and DSI tests and similar outcomes were found.