Development of a Dutch matrix sentence test to assess speech intelligibility in noise.

Objective: A Dutch matrix sentence test was developed and evaluated. A matrix test is a speech-in-noise test based on a closed speech corpus of sentences derived from words from fixed categories. An example is "Mark gives five large flowers."

Design: This report consists of the development of the speech test and a multi-center evaluation.

Study Sample: Forty-five normal-hearing participants.

Results: The developed matrix test has a speech reception threshold in stationary noise of - 8.4 dB with an inter-list standard deviation of 0.2 dB. The slope of the intelligibility function is 10.2 %/dB and this is slightly lower than that of similar tests in other languages (12.6 to 17.1 %/dB).

Conclusions: The matrix test is now also available in Dutch and can be used in both Flanders and the Netherlands.