Speech Understanding in Children With Normal Hearing: Sound Field Normative Data for BabyBio, BKB-SIN, and QuickSIN.

OBJECTIVE

The primary goal was to establish normative data for the Pediatric AzBio "BabyBio," QuickSIN, and BKB-SIN measures in the sound field for children with normal hearing.

SETTING

Tertiary care hospital; cochlear implant (CI) program.

PATIENTS

Forty-one children with normal hearing were recruited across four age groups (5-6, 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12 yr).

INTERVENTIONS

Sentence recognition testing was assessed at four different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs, +10, +5, 0, and -5 dB) for BabyBio sentences as well as for the BKB-SIN and QuickSIN tests. All measures were presented in the sound field at 60 dBA except QuickSIN, which was presented at 70 dBA.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

BabyBio sentence recognition, BKB-SIN SNR-50, and QuickSIN SNR-50 were analyzed to establish sound field norms.

RESULTS

BabyBio sentence recognition approached ceiling at all SNRs with mean scores ranging from 86% at -5 dB SNR to 99.3% at +10 dB SNR. Mean QuickSIN SNR-50 was 6.6 dB. Mean BKB-SIN SNR-50 was 1.6 dB with sound field data being consistent with insert earphone normative data in the BKB-SIN manual. Performance for all measures improved with age.

CONCLUSION

Children with normal hearing achieve ceiling-level performance for BabyBio sentence recognition at SNRs used for clinical CI testing (≥ 0 dB SNR) and approach ceiling level even at -5 dB SNR. Consistent with previous reports, speech recognition in noise improved with age from 5 to 12 years in children with normal hearing. Thus, speech recognition in noise might also increase in the CI population across the same age range warranting age-specific norms for CI recipients. Last, the QuickSIN test could be substituted for the BKB-SIN test with appropriate age-normative data.