Comparison of three types of French speech-in-noise tests: a multi-center study.

OBJECTIVE: To compare results on the everyday sentence test 'FIST', the new closed-set sentence test 'FrMatrix', and the digit triplet screening test 'FrDigit3'. DESIGN: First, the FrMatrix was developed and normative values were obtained. Subsequently, speech reception thresholds (SRTs) for the three types of tests were gathered at four study centers representing different geographic regions in Belgium and France. STUDY SAMPLE: Fifty-seven normal-hearing listeners took part in the normative study of the FrMatrix, and 118 subjects, with a wide range of hearing thresholds, participated in the comparative study. RESULTS: Homogenizing the individual words of the FrMatrix with regard to their intelligibility resulted in a reference SRT of -6.0 (±0.6) dB SNR and slope at the SRT of 14.0 %/dB. The within-subject variability was only 0.4 dB. Comparison of the three tests showed high correlations between the SRTs mutually (>0.81). The FrMatrix had the highest discriminative power, both in stationary and in fluctuating noise. For all three tests, differences across the participating study centers were small and not significant. CONCLUSIONS: The FIST, the FrMatrix, and the FrDigit3 provide similar results and reliably evaluate speech recognition performance in noise both in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.