Structural Analysis of Word Responses Made by Hard of Hearing Subjects on a Discrimination Test

I. Introduction  Discrimination of the sounds of speech is a topic which continues to occupy the attention of investigators who are interested in nonclinical as well as clinical aspects of speech and hearing. In a report to a CHABA Symposium on Military Audiometry, Hirsh¹ pointed out that there are dimensions other than intensity required for the understanding of speech, that involve complex discriminations between frequencies, groups of frequencies, simultaneous intensities, and tonal complexities. He further states that, since all of these factors are not yet understood, perception of speech can be predicted only by testing it directly.Numerous efforts have been made to construct tests of sound discrimination. In 1931, Travis² and Rasmus constructed a speech-sound discrimination test. The test items were nonsense syllables. In 1943, Templin³ reported a test of sound discrimination which consisted of 70 pairs of consonants combined with various vowels. Norms were established