Toward Evidence-Based Practice in the Speech Audiometric Assessment of Linguistic Minorities
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2009
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
One of the audiologist’s main objectives is to maximize a person’s hearing such that he or she
can understand speech and maintain communication with others. In the audiological setting, the
ability to understand speech is thus most frequently conceived of in relation to one’s capacity to
hear. While speech understanding may in essence begin with one’s ears, the journey beyond
perception to comprehension is ultimately dependent on one’s knowledge of a language, namely
that of the speaker. The factor of language often goes unrealized, however, as the majority of
audiologists and their patients are speakers of the same language, English. Moreover, most
speech audiometry exams are administered with English test materials that have been
standardized on monolingual, English-speaking populations. This predominance of English
commonly leaves linguistic minorities underserved. Even though these individuals are liable to
have a limited knowledge of English, it is common for the audiologist to nonetheless test their
ability to understand speech using English. The question that arises here is whether speech
audiometry remains a measure of intelligibility vs. audibility, or whether there are additional
language-related influences at play. We argue that linguistic variables are indeed active, can
invalidate testing and affect the overall quality of audiological service. The problems borne from
language discrepancies are defined in terms of their potential prevalence on populational level.
Following that is a review of recent research on speech perception in bilingual2, non-native3
English speakers to show how linguistic variables, on multiple levels of processing, can
influence a bilingual listener’s English word recognition. The implications the research holds for
improving speech audiometry in clinical practice is lastly discussed.