Speech

Speech audiometry consists of two parts - Speech Reception Threshold (SRT) and Speech Discrimination.

The SRT is the softest familiar word a patient can repeat back 50% of the time. Special words are used for this part - Spondee Words. These are words with two syllables with equal stress on both syllables, for example "baseball" or "hotdog". This is a threshold measure.

Speech discrimination is the ability to understand speech at a comfortable listening level. This is a supra threshold measure. The word list is usually read at 40 decibels above the SRT measurement. A special word list is used. These lists are phonetically balanced, meaning the percent of time each sound is on the list is equal to its occurrence in the English language. These are all one syllable words. This is a very important measurement. This test is an indicator of how clear speech is. If speech discrimination is poor, speech is perceived as garbled by the listener.