title: [Development of Mandarin tonal identification in noise test materials].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to develop comprehensive test material for Mandarin tone identification in noise (M-TINT) based on the linguistic characteristics in Chinese.
  
  
  METHODS
  In keeping with both the reliability and efficiency in clinical practice, a primary list consisted of 320 words(80 syllables in four tones each) was designed according to the following principles: shortness of the lists, word familiarity and with a meaning in all four tones. The digital sound file was recorded by a male speaker and a female speaker (both of them are radio broadcaster).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The tonal identification material database, which included 288 items (72 loudness-balanced syllables in all 4 Mandarin tones) was established by digital filler and balanced for equal loudness. The complete material was recorded in two CDs in a male version and a female version. The speaker-specific masking noises were generated by filtering Gaussian white noise to the speaker's long-term average speech spectrum (LTASS) and by scaling the masking noises to the same RMS amplitudes, as those of the speech, in order to acquire the effective sound masking. The speaker-specific masking noises could be able or disable during the word presentation. The sound pressure level could be selected concerning on the test setting.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The mandarin tonal identification materials were designed by both the tonal acoustic properties and the psychophysics characteristic of adults. It is an useful speech test in clinical work and research, and can potentially be used as the basic list for other tonal language identification test in the future.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Institute of Otolaryngology, Key Laboratory of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Capital Medical University, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100730, China.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Beier
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krenmayr
authors.forename: Xueqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Shuo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Reinhold
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schatzer
authors.forename: Clemens
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zierhofer
authors.affiliation: Email: handm@trhos.com.
authors.forename: Demin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006320:Hearing Tests / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D015203:Reproducibility of Results