ASSESSMENT OF CLINICAL UTILITY OF PHONEMICALLY BALANCED WORD LISTS FOR ADULT SPEAKERS OF KANNADA

Abstract

Objective: The present study aimed at standardizing the phonemically balanced word lists in the Kannada language for adults developed by Manjula et al. (2015). Materials and Methods: Forty individuals with different degrees of sensorineural hearing loss were enrolled for the study. The word lists developed by Manjula et al. (2015) were presented monaurally under headphones at 40 dB SL (ref: PTA) in quiet. The number of correctly identified words was calculated for each list. The scores of all the lists in each group were statistically analyzed. Results: The results revealed that there is list equivalency within each group on repeated measures ANOVA. The statistical analysis also revealed that the speech identification scores reduced significantly with an increase in the severity of hearing loss on MANOVA. Conclusion: The lists developed by Manjula et al. (2015) are sensitive to different degrees of hearing loss. Hence, the lists can be a good speech identification tool for testing adu.