J Am Acad Audiol 25:229-230 (2014)
Letter to the Editor DOI: 10.3766/jaaa.25.2.11 Suggestion for Terminological Reform in Speech Audiometry Recently a military audiologist in the Washington, DC, area asked one of us which of the two terms, speech recognition or speech intelligibility, was correct, or whether they were perhaps interchangeable. They are, indeed, interchangeable because, from the standpoint of audiological measures, they are both useless. Like so many other terminology issues, this one arises because there is a tendency to name things fancifully rather than operationally. One of the principal values of operational definitions (Bridgman, 1927) is that you avoid vagueness and misunderstandings later on by only naming things according to the operations involved in measuring them. The concept was popularized in psychology by the well-known hearing scientist Stanley Smith Stevens, who described operational definitions as follows: "This procedure consists in referring each concept for its definition to the concrete operations by which the concept is arrived at, and in rejecting all notions founded upon impossible operations" (Stevens, 1935, p. 517). The terms speech intelligibility and speech recognition may be useful in talking to the general public, but they are not helpful in communication among audiologists; they do not tell us what operations were used to make the measurements. We have outlined in Table 1 what we think would be a more helpful terminology. The term speech audiometry is easily and unambiguously understood as an inclusive term for the use of speech materials to assess hearing status. Within that rubric virtually all of our actual speech audiometric measures can be placed into one of four categories: (1) Threshold, (2) Consonant or vowel discrimination, (3) Word recognition, and (4) Message
understanding. This framework is elaborated in Table 1. Let us discuss each of these recommendations in turn. 1. Thirty years ago two of us (Wilson and Margolis, 1983) argued, apparently not persuasively, that the detection threshold for words, the lowest intensity level at which the detection of a speech stimulus is recorded on 50% of trials, should be called the speech detection threshold, and, for specifically word stimuli, the word detection threshold. We also argued that the concept of the word recognition threshold (variously called speech threshold or speech reception threshold or spondee threshold), probably did not deserve a high standing among clinical auditory tests. We cited troubling problems with homogeneity of individual spondee words, variations among talkers, and questionable relevance to the communicative process. To date these problems remain unresolved, yet word recognition thresholds may be useful under some circumstances. 2. The term speech discrimination score is not helpful because it does not convey what is being discriminated. The word discrimination ought to be reserved for scores that refiect the operation of actually differentiating between minimally different alternatives (e.g., "ba-da" vs. "ba-ba"). In a simple yes/no design, for example, the elements of the pair are the same in half of trials, different in the other half. After each trial the participant responds "same" or "different" by pressing the appropriate response button. 3. It is safe to say that the majority of speech audiometric measures involve word recognition. This is an operationally sound (no pun intended) definition because it is limited to the operations involved in the measurement (present a word and instruct
Table 1. Suggested Terminology for Speech Audiometry Concept/Terminology
Example of Stimulus/Qperation
Threshold Detection Recognition Consonant or vowel discrimination
"hotdog" "hotdog" "ba-da" followed by "ba-ba"
Word recognition
"Say the word dog"
Message understanding
"Hold bearing at 040 degrees"
Response/Qperation Listener responds if word detected. Response scored as "yes" or "no." Response scored as either correct or incorrect. Listener votes "same" or "different." Response scored as either correct or incorrect. Listener repeats test word. Response scored as either correct or incorrect. Listener repeats gist of message. Gist response scored as either correct or incorrect
ssa
Journal of the American Academy of Audiology/Volume 25, Number 2, 2014
the listener to repeat it back to you). Score it as either correct (recognized as the word presented) or incorrect (not recognized as the word presented). When audiologists talk about "speech recognition" or "speech intelligibility," they are usually talking about word recognition. 4. There are almost no tests of genuine speech understanding, that is, understanding the gist of an entire message. More than 70 yr ago investigators at the Psychoacoustic Laboratory at Harvard constructed such a measure, PAL Test #8; it was based on answers to questions posed relative to a paragraph of information about landmarks in the New York City area. It was immediately criticized for its geographic specificity and never really got off the ground. We continue to stand in need of tests of how well a complete message is understood. If we can send men and women to the moon.... It would not be amiss to consign terms like speech discrimination score, speech reception threshold, speech intelligibility, and speech recognition to the historical archives.
Hopefully a more frequent use of the term word recognition will put us on a true operational course. James Jerger School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas Richard Wilson Research Service, VA Medical Center, Mountain Home, TN Robert Margolis Department of Otolaryngology, University of Minnesota
REFERENCES Bridgman PW. (1927) The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: MacMülan. Stevens SS. (1935) The operational definition of psychological constructs. Psychol Rev 42:517-527. Wilson RH, Margolis RH. (1983) Measurements of auditory thresholds for speech stimuli. In: Koakle DF, Rintelmann WF, eds. Principles ofSpeech Audiometry. Baltimore: University Park Press, 79—126.
Copyright of Journal of the American Academy of Audiology is the property of American Academy of Audiology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Letter to the Editor DOI: 10.3766/jaaa.25.2.11 Suggestion for Terminological Reform in Speech Audiometry Recently a military audiologist in the Washington, DC, area asked one of us which of the two terms, speech recognition or speech intelligibility, was correct, or whether they were perhaps interchangeable. They are, indeed, interchangeable because, from the standpoint of audiological measures, they are both useless. Like so many other terminology issues, this one arises because there is a tendency to name things fancifully rather than operationally. One of the principal values of operational definitions (Bridgman, 1927) is that you avoid vagueness and misunderstandings later on by only naming things according to the operations involved in measuring them. The concept was popularized in psychology by the well-known hearing scientist Stanley Smith Stevens, who described operational definitions as follows: "This procedure consists in referring each concept for its definition to the concrete operations by which the concept is arrived at, and in rejecting all notions founded upon impossible operations" (Stevens, 1935, p. 517). The terms speech intelligibility and speech recognition may be useful in talking to the general public, but they are not helpful in communication among audiologists; they do not tell us what operations were used to make the measurements. We have outlined in Table 1 what we think would be a more helpful terminology. The term speech audiometry is easily and unambiguously understood as an inclusive term for the use of speech materials to assess hearing status. Within that rubric virtually all of our actual speech audiometric measures can be placed into one of four categories: (1) Threshold, (2) Consonant or vowel discrimination, (3) Word recognition, and (4) Message
understanding. This framework is elaborated in Table 1. Let us discuss each of these recommendations in turn. 1. Thirty years ago two of us (Wilson and Margolis, 1983) argued, apparently not persuasively, that the detection threshold for words, the lowest intensity level at which the detection of a speech stimulus is recorded on 50% of trials, should be called the speech detection threshold, and, for specifically word stimuli, the word detection threshold. We also argued that the concept of the word recognition threshold (variously called speech threshold or speech reception threshold or spondee threshold), probably did not deserve a high standing among clinical auditory tests. We cited troubling problems with homogeneity of individual spondee words, variations among talkers, and questionable relevance to the communicative process. To date these problems remain unresolved, yet word recognition thresholds may be useful under some circumstances. 2. The term speech discrimination score is not helpful because it does not convey what is being discriminated. The word discrimination ought to be reserved for scores that refiect the operation of actually differentiating between minimally different alternatives (e.g., "ba-da" vs. "ba-ba"). In a simple yes/no design, for example, the elements of the pair are the same in half of trials, different in the other half. After each trial the participant responds "same" or "different" by pressing the appropriate response button. 3. It is safe to say that the majority of speech audiometric measures involve word recognition. This is an operationally sound (no pun intended) definition because it is limited to the operations involved in the measurement (present a word and instruct
Table 1. Suggested Terminology for Speech Audiometry Concept/Terminology
Example of Stimulus/Qperation
Threshold Detection Recognition Consonant or vowel discrimination
"hotdog" "hotdog" "ba-da" followed by "ba-ba"
Word recognition
"Say the word dog"
Message understanding
"Hold bearing at 040 degrees"
Response/Qperation Listener responds if word detected. Response scored as "yes" or "no." Response scored as either correct or incorrect. Listener votes "same" or "different." Response scored as either correct or incorrect. Listener repeats test word. Response scored as either correct or incorrect. Listener repeats gist of message. Gist response scored as either correct or incorrect
ssa
Journal of the American Academy of Audiology/Volume 25, Number 2, 2014
the listener to repeat it back to you). Score it as either correct (recognized as the word presented) or incorrect (not recognized as the word presented). When audiologists talk about "speech recognition" or "speech intelligibility," they are usually talking about word recognition. 4. There are almost no tests of genuine speech understanding, that is, understanding the gist of an entire message. More than 70 yr ago investigators at the Psychoacoustic Laboratory at Harvard constructed such a measure, PAL Test #8; it was based on answers to questions posed relative to a paragraph of information about landmarks in the New York City area. It was immediately criticized for its geographic specificity and never really got off the ground. We continue to stand in need of tests of how well a complete message is understood. If we can send men and women to the moon.... It would not be amiss to consign terms like speech discrimination score, speech reception threshold, speech intelligibility, and speech recognition to the historical archives.
Hopefully a more frequent use of the term word recognition will put us on a true operational course. James Jerger School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas Richard Wilson Research Service, VA Medical Center, Mountain Home, TN Robert Margolis Department of Otolaryngology, University of Minnesota
REFERENCES Bridgman PW. (1927) The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: MacMülan. Stevens SS. (1935) The operational definition of psychological constructs. Psychol Rev 42:517-527. Wilson RH, Margolis RH. (1983) Measurements of auditory thresholds for speech stimuli. In: Koakle DF, Rintelmann WF, eds. Principles ofSpeech Audiometry. Baltimore: University Park Press, 79—126.
Copyright of Journal of the American Academy of Audiology is the property of American Academy of Audiology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
