Short Report

International Journal of Audiology 2008; 47:362363

Clemencia Barón de Otero* The Latin American Spanish Hearing in Noise

Graciela Brik§
Lilian Flores% Test
Silvia Ortiz%
Carolina Abdala#
*Fundación Santa Fé de Bogotá,
Bogotá, Colombia
§
Centro de Investigaciones
Otoaudiológicas, Buenos Aires,
Argentina
%
Grupo Multidisciplinario de
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Implantes Cocleares Hospital General

de México, Hospital Infantil de
Mexico, Instituto National de
Enfermedades Respiratorias, Mexico
#
Cochlear Americas, Englewood,
Colorado, USA
For personal use only.

Introduction commonly used words and recirculated for additional review.

The development of the Latin American Spanish HINT
materials presented several unique challenges. A main goal in
the development of these materials was to create a speech test
that could be used throughout the Spanish-speaking countries of
Latin America. Other HINT languages have had to contend with
regional dialects within a single country; however, the Latin
American Spanish HINT materials are intended to be used in
several countries. After discussions with Spanish linguists in the
United States and native speakers in 14 Latin American
countries, it was agreed that that a speaker of the general dialect
of Latin American Spanish, as spoken by newscasters and
actors, would most likely be equally intelligible throughout Latin
America as long as the vocabulary was carefully selected. This
decision necessitated the review and modification of the written
sentences by native speakers in all 14 countries before the
recordings were made. In addition, the equalization testing and
development of norms was carried out in three different
countries*Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina*allowing the
results to be compared across countries.
Method and Results
Preparation of test materials
A total of 800 four- to eight-word sentences were formed from
children’s books and from translation of the American English
HINT sentences for children. These sentences were distributed
by e-mail to 29 reviewers in 14 countries, Argentina, Chile,
Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico,
Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
The vocabulary items in each sentence were modified to the most
Once consensus was reached on the vocabulary, the sentences
were rated on a five-point scale, where 1 ‘very natural’ and 5 
‘very unnatural’, by a subset of the reviewers, with at least one
reviewer from each country. The average rating was 1.13.
Sentences with ratings above 2.0 were modified and rated again.
Sentences that still received ratings above 2.0 after modification
were deleted. A total of 86 sentences were deleted, leaving 714 to
be recorded. These sentences were recorded at the House Ear
Institute by a male voice actor who was born in Columbia and
was a native speaker of Latin American Spanish.
Estimation of the performance-intensity function
Measurement of the performance intensity (PI) function
and the equalization studies were performed simultaneously in
three countries, Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina. Multiple
50-sentence lists were presented to six normally-hearing subjects
in each country at three signal to noise ratios (S/N ratios) (7
dB, 4 dB, and 2 dB). Although the mean performance
showed no significant differences across countries, the slopes for
all three countries were almost identical, averaging 10% intellig-
ibility change per 1 dB change in S/N ratio.
Equalization of sentence difficulty
The 714 sentences were divided into three sets of 238 sentences
for use in the equalization study, with one set initially assigned to
each country. Four rounds of equalization testing were con-
ducted, with 10 normally-hearing subjects participating in each
round in each country. The first two rounds of equalization
testing were completed with the originally assigned sentence sets.
The sets were exchanged between countries for the third and

ISSN 1499-2027 print/ISSN 1708-8186 online Received: Carolina Abdala

DOI: 10.1080/14992020802060888 December 12, 2007 Cochlear Americas, 400 Inverness Parkway Suite 400, Englewood, CO 80112,
# 2008 British Society of Audiology, International Accepted: USA.
Society of Audiology, and Nordic Audiological Society March 17, 2008 E-mail: cabdala@cochlear.com
 fourth rounds, allowing each country to be tested with the
sentence sets equalized by the other two countries. Further
equalization adjustments were made after the third round. Thus,
each set was equalized in two countries and received final
evaluation in the third country. After rejection of sentences that
were too easy or too difficult, 287 sentences remained. The
average intelligibility difference scores for these sentences when
compared across countries over the four rounds of testing was
0.02%, with a standard deviation of 9.8%, which is comparable
to the variability seen for normally-hearing individuals who
speak the same dialect of a language, as seen with most of the
other HINT languages. After equalization, the RMS levels for
94% of the remaining 287 sentences were within 92.5 dB of the
average RMS level.
Formation of sentence lists
Twenty-four 10-sentence lists were created and paired to form
twelve 20-sentence lists, with 98% of all phonemes in each list
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falling within92.5% of the mean distribution for the entire
sentence set. A total of 6667 phonemes were classified into 11
consonant and six vowel categories over the entire set of
materials.
Development of norms
At the time of publication, normative data for the Latin
American Spanish HINT have not been collected. Because of
the need for speech materials in Spanish, the American English
norms (Nilsson et al, 1994) are being used temporarily with the
Latin American Spanish HINT until such time as normative
For personal use only.
data are available. Norm-referenced test interpretations of
results should not be made until appropriate norms have been
published.
Discussion and Conclusions
Development of the Latin American Spanish HINT materials
was undertaken in three countries: Mexico, Columbia, and
Argentina. Comparison of the equalization data from each
The Latin American Spanish Hearing in
Noise Test
country demonstrated that it was possible to create speech
materials with equivalent difficulty, that can be exchanged
between countries speaking the same language. The key element
allowing this exchange appears to have been the careful attention
to the vocabulary items used in the sentences. As long as these
items are not unique to one region or country, the properties of
the test materials are retained when they are used in different
countries that speak the same language.
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on work supported by Cochlear Americas.
The authors are grateful to the following centers in each country
for their assistance in creating the sentence materials: Argentina:
Centro de Investigaciones Otoaudiológicas (C.I.O.A.), Instituto
Privado de ORL. Prof. Diamante, Centro de Alta Tecnologı́a y
Clı́nica Privada Curet, Hospital Británico de Buenos Aires.
Chile: Clı́nicas Las Condes, Centro de Audición y Lenguaje
COMUNICA. Colombia: Fundación Santa Fe, Clı́nica Medel-
lı́n. Costa Rica: Hospital Nacional de Niños. Cuba: Hospital
Calixto Garcı́a. Ecuador: Pro Audio  HABLA. Guatemala:
Centro de Audición y Adiestramiento Fonético. México: Clı́nica
Lomas Altas, Hospital General de México, Hospital Infantil de
México, Instituto de Educación Especial Idea (IDEEA). Para-
guay: Grupo Paraguay. Panamá: Ortofono S.A. Perú: Centro
Peruano de Audición y Lenguaje. Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico Ear
Clinic. Uruguay: Grupo de Implantes Cocleares, Dr. Hamlet
Suarez. Venezuela: Equipos Fonoaudiológicos Carabobo,
EQUIFOC. Grupo Médico Otorrinolaringológico. Technical
assistance was provided by Sigfrid Soli, Andy Vermiglio, Shawn
Gao, and Michael Nilsson.
Reference
Nilsson M., Soli S.D. & Sullivan J.A. 1994. Development of the hearing
in noise test for the measurement of speech reception thresholds in
quiet and in noise. J Acoust Soc Am, 95, 108599.
Otero/Brik/Flores/Ortiz/Abdala 363