청력손실(hearing loss)은 보이지 않는 장애이지만 개인의 삶에 미치는 영향은 상당히 크기 때문에 성인들의 경우 직장 혹은 가정 내의 일상생활에서 여러 가지 어려움들을 겪게 되고, 유소아나 아동들의 경우에도 말이나 언어를 습득하거나 학교 혹은 가정 내의 일상생활에서 성인과 비슷한 어려움을 겪게 된다. 특히 유소아기의 청력손실인 경우 성인과 마찬가지로 다양한 원인에 의해 여러 가지 형태로 나타나는데, 대부분 말을 배우는 시기인 언어습득기의 청력손실로 인해 언어 및 지능발달을 방해하고 정상적인 학습에 지장을 주기 때문에 청력손실의 조기진단을 위한 신생아 청각선별검사와 더불어 치료 및 재활이 다른 어느 시기보다 중요하다. 유소아나 아동을 위한 청각검사에는 아동의 능동적 참여
This study was performed to standardize the Korean bisyllabic word lists for juveniles and preschoolers, which are used for the speech recognition threshold (SRT) test. A set of 50 bisyllabic words for juveniles and 24 words for preschoolers were first selected from previous literatures based on the familiarity, phonetic dissimilarity and normal sampling of Korean speech sounds. Then psychometric function tests for each word were performed for 10 juveniles and 10 preschoolers with normal hearing to choose a more homogeneous group of bisyllabic words with respect to audibility. All test words were randomly presented to each subject at each intensity level from -5 dBHL to 25 dBHL in 5 dB steps for juveniles and -10 dB HL to 30 dB HL in 10 dB steps for preschoolers. For each group, the percentage of correct responses was plotted as a function of intensity level. The slopes and levels at 50% intelligibility of the psychometric function curves for all test words were obtained using the logistic regression equation. The mean slope and threshold were 10.96%/dB (SD 1.63) and 7.89 dBHL (SD 2.48) for juveniles and 6.65%/dB (SD 1.83) and 13.28 dBHL (SD 4.62) for preschoolers. The standard deviation of the intensity in each spectrum of speech sounds was within 10 dB. Based on these results, we finally selected 24 bisyllabic words for juveniles. For preschoolers, we selected 12 words and made a board of pictures composed of 3 rows and 4 columns each of which represents a bisyllabic word. To sum up, these bisyllabic word lists developed in this study are homogeneous with respect to audibility. Before being widely used to hearing-impaired children, however, it may be necessary to verify and revise these lists. KEY WORDS：Bisyllabic word lists·Familiarity·Homogeneity with respect to audibility·Psychometric function curve· Speech recognition thresholds
INTRODUCTION MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES APPENDIXS
