Objective: This study aimed to develop a digitised Mandarin Nonsense Word Speech Perception Test for use in Malaysia, a multilingual country in Southeast Asia.
Design: In Phase I, 400 vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) nonsense word samples containing 20 Mandarin consonants in /a/, /i/, or /u/ contexts were recorded from two speakers of different genders. Acoustic analyses, sound quality ratings, and item validations were used to guide selection of items to form two gender-specific test lists. In Phase II, performance-intensity functions and test-retest reliability for the lists were established.
Study sample: Native Mandarin-speaking adults with normal hearing participated in Phase I (n = 10) and Phase II (n = 69).
Results: Eighty-four of the 400 VCV words were selected to form two gender-specific test lists. A two-way repeated measure ANOVA revealed a significant interaction effect between speaker-gender and presentation level [F (4.88, 283.20) = 22.79, p < 0.001, ηp2= 0.28]. Intraclass correlation scores of 0.75 and 0.87 were obtained for the female-speaker and male-speaker lists respectively.
Conclusions: The preliminary normative data of the Mandarin nonsense word test have been developed. It is recommended to use separate gender-specific norms when conducting the test. The test has good validity and reliability for testing Mandarin-speaking adults in Malaysia.
Keywords: Mandarin; acoustic analysis; gender-differences; nonsense word identification; performance-intensity function.