title: Development of a Mandarin tone identification test: sensitivity index d' as a performance measure for individual tones.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to develop comprehensive test material for Mandarin tone identification in noise for a male and a female talker. Additionally, the sensitivity index d' as a measure for the listeners' performance to identify individual tones was evaluated.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study followed a prospective design.
  
  
  METHODS
  The complete material comprises 72 loudness-balanced syllables in all 4 Mandarin tones. For a selection of 20 syllables, i.e. 80 test words, performance-versus-intensity functions were measured in spectrally matched noise for 16 normal-hearing participants.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The average speech reception thresholds in noise were -12.9 dB for the male and -13.6 dB for the female talker recordings. The corresponding slopes were 8.6%/dB and 7.3%/dB. As a performance measure for individual tones, the proportion of correct responses to specific tones was substantially contaminated by response bias. The sensitivity index d', calculated according to detection theory, provided reasonable and unbiased performance versus intensity functions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results firstly indicate that the material is homogenous enough for use as a speech test in clinical work and research. Secondly, to assess the discrimination performance for individual tones, d' values outperform the simple proportion of correct responses.
authors.affiliation: C. Doppler Laboratory for Active Implantable Systems, Institute of Ion Physics and Applied Physics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. andreas.krenmayr@uibk.ac.at
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krenmayr
authors.forename: Beier
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Haihong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xueqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Demin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Reinhold
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schatzer
authors.forename: Clemens M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Zierhofer
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test / Q000592:standards; D055815:Young Adult