Reactietijdmeting op Woorden in Verbonden Spraak

In order to test whether reaction times to auditory stimuli can be used as a measurement device for hearing impaired subjects, a criterion test was devel-oped with audiometrically normal subjects. It was hypothesized that these normal subjects would recognize a word in connected speech more slowly in an unfavourable than in a favourable sound-noise ratio. To test this hypothesis a pilot was run with this criterion test, consisting of 65 auditorily presented sentences each with a visually presented target. 25 subjects participated in the research. In one third of the sentences a significant correlation was found between S/N ratio and reaction time. The fact that no significant relationship was found in the other sentences may probably be attributed to a combination of factors like differences in individ-ual reaction times and in concentration, different context factors, but certainly also to the presentation of the targetword prior to the auditory signal. Before this test can be used on a larger scale, certain adaptations will have to be made.