Testing Spanish Pediatric Speech Recognition Thresholds

The purpose of this study was to use previously recorded Spanish trisyllabic words tested on adults in the measurement of the speech recognition threshold of Spanish-speaking children in order to (a) determine the words’ appropriateness when testing children and (b) compare psychometric functions between adults and children. A selection of 28 frequently used trisyllabic words was chosen from previously recorded samples of male and female adult native speakers of Spanish. These words were then presented to 20 native Spanish-speaking children with normal hearing between the ages of 4 and 8 years. The words were presented starting at -5 dB HL and ascended in 5 dB increments until the presentation level reached 15 dB HL. Using logistic regression psychometric functions were calculated for each word.