In this study, we examined administration times for monitored-live-voice (MLV) versus recorded presentation of NU-6 word lists for listeners with normal hearing and hearing loss. This study documented that test administration time for MLV presentation of monosyllabic word lists was significantly shorter than that for recorded presentations of the same stimuli for listeners with normal hearing and hearing impairment. However, this difference was just over one minute for listeners with normal hearing (1 min, 9 sec) and just under one minute for listeners with hearing loss (49 sec). The listeners with hearing loss took longer to respond to the stimuli than the listeners with normal hearing which reduced the difference in administration time between MLV and recorded lists for this population. Given that the majority of patients audiologists test have hearing loss, the average difference in test administration time between MLV and recorded presentation was less than one minute. Thus, although this is a statistically significant difference, it is our belief that this difference is not clinically significant. That is, given these findings, we suggest that clinicians should be willing to sacrifice less than one minute of time per word list for greater reliability of the results.

Portions of this study were presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Annual Convention in November, 2010 and at AudiologyNOW! in April, 2011.  This manuscript was published in The International Journal of Audiology in 2011.

From Mendel, L.L. & Owen, S.R. (2011). A study of recorded versus live voice word recognition. International Journal of Audiology, 50(10), 688-693.

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