RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE RATINGS AND OBJECTIVE MEASURES OF PERFORMANCE IN SPEECHREADING SENTENCES

Ninety-six participants with normal hearing and 63 with severe-to-prof ound hearing impairment viewed 100 CID Sentences (Davis & Silverman, 1 970) and 100 B-E Sentences (Bernstein a Eberhardt, 1986b). Objective m easures included words correct, phonemes correct, and visual phonetic distance between the stimulus and response. Subjective ratings were ma de on a 7-point confidence scale. Magnitude of validity coefficients r anged From .34 to .76 across materials, measures, and groups. Particip ants with hearing impairment had higher levels of objective performanc e, higher subjective ratings, and higher validity coefficients, althou gh there were large individual differences, Regression analyses reveal ed that subjective ratings are predictable from stimulus length, respo nse length, and objective performance. The ability of speechreaders to make valid performance evaluations was interpreted in terms of contem porary word recognition models.