Internationally comparable screening tests for listening in noise in several European languages: The German digit triplet test as an optimization prototype

Abstract

The optimization criteria established here should be used for similar screening tests in other languages.

Development and validation of a smartphone-based digits-in-noise hearing test in South African English

“…The average slope steepness for the speech recognition function of the South African smartphone-based digits-in-noise hearing test (broadband signal) (20%/dB) agreed well with the Dutch (20%/dB), French (20%/dB) and German (18%/dB) bandwidth limited telephone digits-in-noise tests (Smits et al, 2004;Jansen et al, 2010;Zokoll et al, 2012). …”

“…German digits-in-noise tests by telephone ranged between -6.4 to -6.9 dB SNR (Smits et al, 2004;Zokoll et al, 2012). The lower SRT value for the South African smartphone test can be attributed to the digital signal quality afforded by the smartphone as opposed to the restricted bandwidth on landlines used by the other studies.…”

“…The South African digits-in-noise hearing test produces a digital signal that covers a bandwidth of 30 to 20, 000 Hz which represents the human voice more accurately and therefore improves speech intelligibility (Bonello n.d.). When headphones were used to conduct the Dutch, French and German digits-in-noise tests, the SRT scores (-9.3 to -11.2 dB SNR) compared more favourably to the SRT of the South African test (Zokoll et al, 2012).…”

“…These speech-in-noise tests measure the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) where a listener recognizes 50% of the digit-triplets (i.e., 4-7-2) correctly (i.e., SRT). During the past ten years, the telephone-based digit-triplet speech-in-noise hearing screening tests have been developed for several countries including the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and France (Watson et al, 2012;Jansen et al, 2010;Zokoll et al, 2012). Smits et al (2004) reported the first telephone-based digit-triplet speech-in-noise screening test, employed as the National Hearing Test in the Netherlands (Smits et al, 2004;Smits et al, 2006).…”

“…Additionally, the users themselves can administer the speech-in-noise hearing screening test, the test is fully automated, and it can be conducted in a few minutes. Furthermore, the digits-triplet speech-in-noise hearing screening test is ecologically valid since it approximates everyday speech-in-noise environments and it has been demonstrated to be sensitive to detect hearing loss (Jansen et al, 2010;Smits et al, 2004;Zokoll et al, 2012;Smits et al, 2013).…”