Word Recognition Score in White Noise Test in Healthy listeners

The acoustic cues of the speech signals which are consisted of consonants and vowels are very important for speech perception in noisy competing situations. Since the perception in noise test is one of the valuable measures in the perception/production abilities, so the objective of this study is to determinate a norm for word recognition in white noise (WN) with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) between ‏+5 and ‏+10 dB in healthy adults Iranian listeners. In this crosssectional study (from April to June 2013) any individuals with our criteria were included, which consisted of 19 female and 18 male within the audiology department of Hamadan University of medical sciences. The assessments consisted of pure-tone audiometry, speech testing in quiet, tympanometry, word recognition sore in white noise test (WRS in WN). Intera class correlation (ICC) and Cronbach's Alpha (CA) used to study the stability of the WRS in WN. Independent two sample T-test was to compare findings among the groups. All subjects had normal hearing thresholds and WRS in quite. We found the mean of the WRS in WN with a SNR between ‏+5dB (78.02±11.13, Min= 48 and Max=100) and ‏+10 dB (86.2±9.77, Min= 60 and Max=100). There was statistically significant difference between the mean scores of‏ +5 and +10 dB (P= 0.005, t= -2.93). We defined a norm for WRS in WN test with a SNR between ‏+5 and‏ +10 dB (78 and 86 percent, respectively) in healthy listeners.