Determination of Turkish age specific norms of hearing in noise test for children

Since background noise is often involved in daily communication processes, evaluation of hearing in noise is of great importance. There are Turkish tests that assess the ability to understand speech in noise for adults, but there are no tests for these characteristics for children. The aim of this study was to develop the ''Hearing in Noise Test for Children'' and to determine age-specific norms for children. To this end, first of all, the sentences in the Hearing in Noise Test for adults were selected by 5-year-old children as repeatable under optimal listening conditions and 12 lists containing 10 sentences were formed. Then, 6 ages (8 girls, 8 boys), 8 ages (7 girls, 8 boys), 10 ages (12 girls, 4 boys) and 18-30 ages group of normal hearing (6 women, 4 men) 57 individuals were evaluated in total. The mean age-specific speech reception threshold (SRT) values were determined for children and correction factors were calculated for the 6-12 age range by comparing performance in each age group and adult performance. Correction factors for 6 years of age Noise Front: 3,44, Noise Right: 5,9, Noise Left: 5,32; for 8 years of age Noise Front: 2,1, Noise Right: 5,2, Noise Left: 4,09; for the age of 10, it was determined as Noise Front: 1,62, Noise Right: 4,53, Noise Left: 3,86 dB SNR. It is thought that adult performance for all test conditions can be achieved at age 13 and beyond. Statistical analysis showed that the SRT values and spatial separation advantage improved with age. Correction factors were obtained for all test conditions except quiet condition, which can be used to predict the performance of a normal hearing child in the age range of 6-12 years. The findings of this study are in line with the developmental tendencies seen in other languages, but are also consistent with the literature reporting increased performance with age, especially in terms of understanding speech in noise. Key Words: HINT, noise, hearing in noise, speech reception threshold