Development of the mandarin reading span test and confirmation of its relationship with speech perception in noise

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to develop a dual-task Mandarin Reading Span Test (RST) to assess verbal working memory related to speech perception in noise.

Design: The test material was developed taking into account psycholinguistic factors (i.e. sentence structure, number of syllables, word familiarity, and sentences plausibility), to achieve good test reliability and face validity. The relationship between the 28-sentence Mandarin RST and speech perception in noise was confirmed using three speech perception in noise measures containing varying levels of contextual and linguistic information.

Study sample: The study comprised 42 young adults with normal hearing and 56 older adult who were hearing aid users with moderate to severe hearing loss.

Results: In older hearing aid users, the 28-sentence RST showed significant correlation with speech reception thresholds as measured by three Mandarin sentence in noise tests (r_s or r = -.681 to -.419) but not with the 2-digit sequence Digit-in-Noise Test.

Conclusion: The newly developed dual-task Mandarin RST, constructed with careful psycholinguistic consideration, demonstrates a significant relationship with sentence perception in noise. This suggests that the Mandarin RST could serve as a measure of verbal working memory.

Keywords: Cognitive hearing science; reading span test; speech perception in noise; working memory.