Validity of Bilingual Speech-In-Noise Hearing Assessments/Tests

Principal Investigator:
Alyssa Smith

Co-PIs:
Iyad Ghanim

Abstract:
This project tests whether standardized audiological assessment of hearing difficulty in background noise presents a disadvantage to bilingual more than monolingual speakers. The most popular supplemental speech-in-noise test administered to adults is the Quick-SIN- by Etymotic® Research, which uses sentences to assess a patient’s ability to hear and understand speech in noise. However, the use of sentences to test processing in bilinguals may be problematic: bilinguals may use semantic information encoded in a sentence much differently than monolingual speakers. Therefore, the Quick-SIN- sentences encode additional semantic information, which facilitates monolingual processing, but not bilingual processing.

Description of Research:
The purpose of this project is to test whether standardized audiological assessment of hearing difficulty in background noise presents a disadvantage to bilingual speakers more than monolingual speakers.

An auditory priming experiment will be used to compare performance on the sentence-based Quick-SIN in groups of bilinguals and monolinguals. Bilinguals will be Spanish-English speakers who are dominant in English and report having learned English early in life