SLPOtherEar and hearing2025

Effect of Speech Material and Scoring Method on Psychometric Curves for Cochlear Implant Users and Typical Hearing Listeners.

Hendrik Christiaan Stronks, Robin van Deurzen, Paula Louisa Jansen and 2 others

PMID 40296215

WHAT IT FOUND

For cochlear implant users, the Matrix test is much harder than the DIN test, especially if scored by sentence.

Use word scoring for Matrix sentences to get accurate results. The DIN test with digit scoring offers the best sensitivity for tracking progress in this group.

Key findings

01Cochlear implant users had significantly higher speech reception thresholds and shallower psychometric slopes than typical hearing listeners across all tests.

02For the Matrix test, sentence scoring produced much higher (worse) thresholds and shallower slopes than word scoring for cochlear implant users.

03The DIN test with digit scoring showed the steepest slopes and lowest variance for cochlear implant users, making it highly sensitive to changes in signal-to-noise ratio.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

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What it does not show

The sample size was small (18 CI users), which may limit generalizability to the wider CI population. Front-end noise reduction algorithms were disabled to standardize conditions, which may underestimate real-world speech recognition. Participants were Dutch speakers; results may not directly translate to other languages or accents.

Declared interests

Funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Three authors received a nonrestrictive research grant from Advanced Bionics LLC, the manufacturer of the devices used.

The easy way to misread this

Do not assume that standard sentence scoring is appropriate for all speech tests in cochlear implant users. For the Matrix test, sentence scoring can make the patient appear significantly worse than they are; word scoring is required for an accurate assessment.

Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →