SS05: HEARING AND COMMUNICATION

MULTILINGUAL HEARING DIAGNOSTICS FOR EUROPE

B. Kollmeier (1),( 2),( 3); K.C. Wagener (2); M. Buschermöhle (1); M. Vormann (2); M. Zokoll (3); M. E. Lutman (4); B. Larsby (5), J. Lyzenga (6); T. Van Esch (7) and W. A. Dreschler (7).

 (1) HörTech gGmbH D- Oldenburg; (2) Hörzentrum Oldenburg GmbH, D- Oldenburg; (3) Medizinische Physik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, D-Oldenburg; (4) Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, UK-Southampton; (5) Linköping University, Department of Audiology, S-Linköping; (6) Department of ENT Communication, VU Medical Center, NL- Amsterdam and (7) Academic Medical Center, NL-Amsterdam.

Both audiological screening and rehabilitative audiology require speech tests to be performed in each individual´s native language. Since many languages prevail in Europe, an important goal is that exactly comparable speech audiometric tests are available for as many European and non-European languages as possible. If closed-set tests are developed that can be administered in a (semi-) automatic way, this will not only allow to treat patients with various language backgrounds in each European location in the same way, but will also facilitate comparisons of audiological results achieved across different countries.

The integrated EU-project HEARCOM therefore developed speech materials and audiological test protocols that are comparable across several languages and will be considered as a de-facto-standard for audiological tests across different languages. Three formats of speech tests were considered, i.e., a digit triplet test for screening purposes, a test format with short meaningful sentences, and a matrix test format with syntactically fixed, but semantical nonsense sentences (“Hannah likes twelve green beds”). Moreover, we defined a so-called “Auditory Profile” that can be assessed for each individual listener using a standardized battery of audiological tests that – in addition to the pure-tone audiogram and speech perception  - focus on loudness perception, frequency resolution, temporal acuity, binaural functioning, listening effort, subjective hearing abilities, and cognition. For the sake of testing time only summary tests are included from each of these areas, but the broad approach of characterizing auditory communication problems by means of standardized test is expected to have an added value above traditional testing in understanding the reasons for poor speech reception. All tests have been implemented on the same test platform: Oldenburg Measurements Applications (OMA). The presentation will summarize the results of two international 5-center studies conducted in the Netherlands (2 centers), Germany, Great Britain and Sweden. The focus of this presentation will be laid on the comparability of test results across languages and centres.