What material is commonly used for Speech Discrimination Testing (SDT)?

Speech Discrimination Testing (SDT) commonly employs cold running speech as its primary material. Cold running speech refers to a continuous stream of speech presented at a constant level, which effectively simulates natural conversational speech. This type of material allows for a consistent evaluation of an individual's ability to discriminate between different phonetic elements in real-time, reflecting how they might manage in everyday listening situations.

Using cold running speech provides a more accurate assessment of speech understanding, especially in challenging listening environments, compared to other options, which either lack the same level of naturalness or do not represent conversational speech effectively. For example, speech simulating noise and static speech samples may not adequately reflect conversational dynamics, and repetitive speech patterns could create an artificial testing situation that doesn't mirror real-world hearings. The choice of cold running speech makes SDT a reliable tool for assessing how well a person can perceive and understand speech in natural environments.