title: Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 in multi-talker babble: a preliminary report.
abstract: The purpose of this project was to develop a spoken word-recognition task that could be used clinically to evaluate recognition performance of individuals with hearing loss in a background noise. The test instrument incorporated monosyllabic words at seven levels over a 35-dB range presented in a background of "multi-talker" babble that was fixed in level. In Experiment 1, we established normative data on 24 young adult listeners with normal hearing and on 50 older adult listeners with high-frequency hearing loss. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects that age and hearing loss have on understanding speech in multi-talker babble by studying 15 subjects in each decade interval from 20 to 79 years.
authors.affiliation: James H. Quillen VA Medical Center Mountain Home, TN 37684, USA. richard.wilson2@med.va.gov
authors.forename: Richard H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Strouse
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001299:Audiometry / Q000379:methods*; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D012016:Reference Values; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013067:Speech Perception; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test