The Design and Evaluation of Children's Speech Recognition Audiometry Listsin Moroccan Dialect

- To develop mono and bisyllabicspeech recognition audiometry lists in Moroccan dialect with corresponding picture boards adapted to morrocan children from 3 to 5 years old.

- To develop and record children's speech recognition audiometry lists in Moroccan dialect, adapted to children aged 6 and over.

- To test these lists on a sample of normal hearing Moroccan children in order to evaluate their reliability and validate them.

Materials and Methods: First of all, the linguistics laboratory created lists of monosyllabic et dissyllabic words in Moroccan dialect based on the Arabic speech audiometry lists. Then they created picture boards adapted to the lists.

The 2nd step was to validate this lists (word lists and picture boards) within a sample of normal hearing Moroccan children: This involved verifying that tonal audiometry was normal, then verifying that the words selected were common and well-known to children of this age, and finally verifiying that the pictures selected were well-know and adapted to the words.

During the study, the world lists and picture boards were tested in a university hospital otolaryngology service (Hospital 20 Août of Casablanca)and corrected (84 enfants).

Results: Twenty illustrated speech recognition audiometry lists intended for moroccan children from 3 to 5 years old and 20 recorded speech recognition audiometry lists intended for moroccan children from 6 years old was created.

All recorded words/pictures and words have been recognized by the children. The 40 lists evaluated made it possible to collect audiometry results speech consistent with the results of pure-tone audiometry.

Conclusion: At the end of this study, 20 illustrated speech recognition audiometry lists intended for moroccan children from 3 to 5 years old and 20 recordedspeech recognition audiometry lists intended for moroccan children from 6 years old have been validated in normal-hearing children. This is a first step before the validation of these lists in deaf children and by extension in children with cochlear implants.