(PP1608) Cochlear Implant Evaluations of Spanish Speaking Adults: Comparison of Two Sentence Perception Tests

Learning objectives. Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to identify key differences between Spanish HINT (S-HINT) and Spanish AzBio (S-AzBio) tests in order to choose an appropriate sentence perception test for cochlear implant evaluations of Spanish speaking adults. Additionally, they will be able to apply strategies that allow them to efficiently test Spanish speaking candidates/users.

Background. For the last 30 years, cochlear implant candidacy criteria have expanded due to advancements in technology and the development of new assessment materials (Holder et al., 2018). Today, the AzBio sentences are considered the standard test for pre- and post-implant speech perception evaluations in English (Rivas et al., 2021). The AzBio sentences were developed with the purpose of assessing high-performing cochlear implant users and reducing ceiling effects (Spahr et al., 2012). According to the U.S. Census of 2020, the Hispanic population constituted 18.5% of the nation’s total population. This presents a challenge for audiologists as there is great need for valid Spanish perception tests that equate to the evidence-based, best practice materials used in English. Consequently, Rivas et al. (2020) developed the S-AzBio Sentence Corpus. The purpose of the current study was to analyze and compare the familiar S-HINT to the new S-AzBio.

Method. A linguistic analysis of the S-HINT and the S-AzBio was carried out.  The number of words per sentence and the type, syntactic structure and verb tense of each sentence were measured using specialized software. Sentence difficulty was rated on a 5-point scale (very easy to very hard), determined by the grammatical structure and verb tense of each sentence. The total number of sentences in each category was compared for each test. 

Results. The results of the analyses showed that the S-HINT is composed only of simple sentences (100%) while the S-AzBio includes both simple (79%) and compound sentences (21%). The statistical analysis revealed a significant difference in the number of words per sentence, with the S-AzBio having a larger mean number of words per sentence and a larger maximum number of words than the S-HINT. Regarding sentence difficulty, whereas a Chi-square test revealed no significant differences between the tests, the two tests differed in the tails of the difficulty distributions. 38% of the total number of S-HINT sentences were rated as Very Easy compared to 2% for the S-AzBio. In contrast, 15% of the S-AzBio sentences were rated as Hard and Very Hard compared to 1% of the S-HINT sentences. 

Conclusions. The results of this study showed the linguistic and structural differences between the S-HINT and the S-AzBio tests. They corroborated the researcher’s statement that the S-AzBio is a more challenging test which could be used to demonstrate long-term benefit from cochlear implantation (Rivas et al., 2020). In contrast, the S-HINT is a less challenging test which could be used with patients with language difficulties, memory problems and slower processing. These results could help clinicians determine which test is best for a given patient so that effective cochlear implant evaluations of Spanish speaking candidates/users can be performed.