PREDICTING THE SPEECH RECOGNITION PERFORMANCE OF ELDERLY INDIVIDUALS WITH SENSORINEURAL HEARING IMPAIRMENT - A PROCEDURE BASED ON THE SPEECH-INTELLIGIBILITY INDEX

The Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) was used as a basis for predict ing the performance of elderly hearing-impaired subjects on a speech-i n-noise test. The standard SII calculation scheme was compared with mo dified schemes, and correlations were obtained between measured and pr edicted scores. The results suggested that a modified calculation sche me, which includes corrections for sensorineural hearing impairment an d age, is appropriate for evaluating individual speech recognition sco res. Based on the results, a computer program has been developed for c linical prediction and evaluation of speech recognition scores.