Development of Urdu Speech Audiometry Material for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to develop standardized Urdu speech materials for assessing speech recognition threshold (SRT) and word recognition score (WRS) for clinical use in Pakistan.

METHOD: The development of Urdu speech materials followed four key parameters: phonemic coverage, phonetic dissimilarity, familiarity with the participants, and homogeneity in terms of audibility. Bisyllabic words for SRT measurement and monosyllabic words for WRS measurement were selected. The most familiar 50 spondee words and 50 monosyllabic words were selected for the evaluation of SRT and WRS, respectively, in children with normal hearing. Thirty spondee words and 34 monosyllabic words with relatively steep and homogeneous psychometric function slopes were included in the final lists.

RESULTS

The mean psychometric function slope at the 50% threshold for the 30 selected spondee words was found to be 9.1%/dB, and for 34 monosyllabic words, it was found to be 6%/dB.

CONCLUSIONS

Bisyllabic words for SRT measurement and monosyllabic words for WRS measurement were successfully developed and evaluated in Lahore, Pakistan. There is a need for the development of speech audiometry materials in other Pakistani languages.