Subject: Re: Rationale for Speech Tests From: Andreas Krenmayr <Andreas.Krenmayr@xxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 07:32:39 +0000 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Hi Enrique, I can only respond to Q2: In "Krenmayr A, Qi B, Liu B, Liu H, Chen X, Han D, Schatzer R, Zierhofer CM. Development of a Mandarin tone identification test: sensitivity index d' as a performance measure for individual tones. Int J Audiol. 2011 Mar;50(3):155-63" we have used signal detection theory to model psychometric functions of Mandarin tone identification. In particular to model the performance of individual tones, for which the percent correct scores have turned out to be considerably biased. Mandarin comprises four tones, when a listener responds "tone 1" in all presentations, the corresponding percent correct for tone 1 would be 100% and for all other tones it would be 0. Every listener seemed to have a bias towards one favorite tone (even though not as extreme as in the example above), so the psychometric functions based on percent correct had all sorts of lower asymptotes. Nevertheless, only the value of 25%, the guess rate, could be the true lower asymptote. Calculating a d' measure, we were able to get rid of the response bias and found nicely linear psychometric functions for d' over SNR. Kind regards, Andreas Andreas Krenmayr, Dr. Dr. Team Leader Studies/Research&Development MED-EL Medical Electronics Fuerstenweg 77a 6020 Innsbruck, Austria Tel +43512288889860 Mobile +4369918888860 Fax +43512288889490 www.medel.com -----Original Message----- From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [mailto:AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 10:39 AM To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx Subject: Rationale for Speech Tests Dear all, I would appreciate your help on the following two questions. Q1. Conventional speech perception tests are run using a fixed speech (or noise) level and varying the speech-to-noise ratio (SNR); the implicit assumption is that the speech reception threshold (SRT) is independent of the absolute speech or noise levels. I would appreciate some references that proof this statement and justify this procedure (PDFs of the appropriate references would be even better). Q2. Can speech psychometric functions (that is, functions representing percent correct identification versus SNR) be modeled using signal detection theory? I would also appreciate references. Thank you so much in advance, - Enrique -- Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda, Ph.D. Instituto de Neurociencias de Castilla y Leon Universidad de Salamanca Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007 Salamanca, Spain Phone: (+34)923294500 ext. 1957; Fax: (+34) 923294750 http://web.usal.es/ealopezpoveda Skype: ealopezpoveda