Validation and reliability of a simplified matrix sentence in quiet test.

Abstract

Hearing impairment is a significant concern in New Zealand and worldwide. When a hearing impairment is left unaddressed, it has the potential to affect many aspects of an individual’s life, including education, employment, safety, and their physical, mental and social health. It adversely affects everyday communication and quality of life for the aging population. Audiologists try to minimise the impact of a hearing impairment on the individual and their families through aural rehabilitation and the use of hearing aid devices (Beattie et al., 1997). Speech testing can provide valuable clinical information on the thresholds of audibility and intelligibility of speech, and on the discrimination of words and phonemes (Niemeyer, 1976). The University of Canterbury Auditory-Visual Matrix Sentence Test – Paediatric (UCAMSTP) was developed to add a reliable speech recognition tool to the audiological test battery for paediatric populations, and can also be suitable for adults who have shorter working memory abilities (Jenkins-Foreman, 2018). In this current study, the performance on the UCAMST-P in quiet conditions for open and closed-set formats is compared to the performance on the word recognition test using meaningful CVC words (revised AB), which is routinely used in most audiology clinic in New Zealand. In addition, this study looks at whether test-retest reliability is affected by age, severity of hearing impairment and score on the Mini-ACE, a cognitive screening tool. Speech Recognition Thresholds (SRT) scores of CVC words were found to have significant correlations for both open and closed-set SRTs obtained using the UCAMST-P. As expected, the study also found there to be a significant difference between the means in the UCAMST-P for open and closed-set formats in quiet conditions. An investigation into its testretest reliability revealed that reliability of the UCAMST-P was unaffected by age, severity of hearing impairment or score on the Mini-ACE cognitive screening tool. The findings of this study provide evidence for potential use of the UCAMST-P to replace the meaningful CVC (revised AB) word recognition test in clinical practice