The effects of adding realism to a conventional speech-in-noise test

Abstract

The speech reception threshold (SRT) is routinely used in research and in the clinic to assess people’s ability to understand speech in noise. The overall goal of this work was to determine whether introducing realistic aspects to speech tests can better capture individual differences and ultimately produce more relevant performance measures. The study examined the psychometric effects of (a) transplanting a standard sentence-in-noise test into a simulated reverberant cafeteria environment, and (b) moving from sentence recall to a new ongoing speech comprehension task.