The effect of the number of items on the reliability of speech intelligibility results for WIPI test

Abstract

The Word Intelligibility by Picture Identification (WIPI) test is a widely used test to assess speech recognition in the pediatric population. The test consists of four 25-item monosyllabic word lists that are within the vocabulary of preschool children. The child responds to each item by selecting one of six pictures on a page, one being the test item. The purpose of this study was to understand if the final score of a test can be obtained accurately with a fewer number of items in a word list. Ten monolingual children (8–12 yrs) with normal hearing were tested using a revised version of the WIPI (2nd ed.), presented in a soundbooth over headphones. Target words were presented in a classroom-noise masker at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio. The results suggest that a minimum of seven items is needed to obtain results that are not statistically different from the one complete test (25 items). This implies that the WIPI can be administered in a shorter time period, which could be particularly beneficial when testing multiple acoustic conditions on experimental tasks.