Performance Perceptual Test (PPT)

Objective measurements are most commonly utilized to assess speech understanding in children. However, such measures overlook valuable self-rating of understanding which may be critical for monitoring performance in challenging everyday listening environments. For example, a parent or teacher may not realize a child is missing important auditory information that may impact understanding until a child fails to perform as expected in a classroom.  Therefore it would seem reasonable to include a measure of self-rated understanding when developing and evaluating audiologic treatment plans. It is still relatively unknown whether children with normal hearing and/or hearing loss are able to self-rate speech intelligibility. Limited evidence suggests that this may be a skill that improves with age. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether children with normal hearing and hearing loss wearing bilateral amplification can self-rate speech understanding Performance-Perceptual Test (PPT) developed by Saunders & Cienkowski (1996).