title: Spanish/English bilingual listeners on clinical word recognition tests: what to expect and how to predict.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The current study was an attempt to provide initial evidence on how to predict the optimal language in which to conduct speech perception testing for Spanish/English (S/E) bilingual listeners.
  
  
  METHODS
  Thirty normal-hearing S/E listeners differing in age of language acquisition, length of immersion, daily language use, self-rated listening proficiency, and language dominance were evaluated on the English and Spanish word recognition tests in quiet and in speech-spectrum noise.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Performance on the English and Spanish tests was not correlated for any conditions. English word recognition was most significantly correlated with age of English acquisition. Logistic regression analyses further demonstrated age of English acquisition to be a good predictor of listeners' relative success on the 2 tests in quiet and at +6 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). At 0 dB SNR, language dominance had the highest predictive specificity, whereas the combination of age of English acquisition and Spanish listening proficiency had the highest sensitivity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A Spanish word recognition test would likely yield more favorable results for S/E bilingual listeners who were Spanish-dominant or who acquired English at 10 years of age or older. It may be necessary for listeners who acquired English at 7-10 years of age to be evaluated in both English and Spanish.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus, One University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA. lu.shi@liu.edu
authors.forename: Lu-Feng
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sánchez
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012016:Reference Values; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult