Current Projects

A Test of Children’s Spanish/English Speech Perception in Noise or Speech Maskers

Funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH Grant Number 5R01DC015056-02; PI: Leibold/Buss)

Speech perception testing is a critically important tool for assessing children’s auditory skills, determining candidacy for sensory devices and guiding language intervention. A large number of children in the US are raised in Spanish-speaking households (>15%), but speech perception testing is typically performed in English or omitted altogether, due to a lack of appropriate test materials and a shortage of Spanish-speaking audiologists. Moreover, speech perception testing is typically performed in quiet or in relatively steady state noise despite the prevalence of complex and time varying sounds in children’s real-world listening environments. The proposed work will develop an easy-to-administer clinical test of speech perception, allowing audiologists (regardless of their language proficiency) to appropriately evaluate Spanish- and English- speaking children in both noise and two-talker backgrounds.

———————————————————————————————————————————-