Developing the LiSN-S test in Brazilian Portuguese
The Listening in Spatialized Noise Sentences (LiSN-S) is a test to evaluate auditory spatial processing cur- rently only available in the English language. To develop the LiSN-S test in Brazilian Portuguese it was necessary to first devise a presentation software and prepare a speech database, recorded by professional voice actresses, to be inserted into the software. These sentences were presented to a group of 35 adults (aged between 19 and 40 years) and 24 children (aged between 8 and 10 years), all with normal hearing—tested through tone audiometry, speech audiometry and tympanometry testing—and good performance at school. We used a logistic curve describing word error rate versus presentation level, fitted for each sentence, to select a set of 120 sentences and adjust their amplitudes for equal intelligibility. We are currently applying the test to a new group of students to determine normality criteria for age groups between 6 and 11 years. Hopefully, the results obtained in this research will help to disclose the importance of studying spatial processing, especially in children with complaints related to hearing difficulties in noisy environments, thus contributing to the diagnosis and help audiologists to plan a more fully and efficient rehabilitation of Brazilian children.