Word recognition skills of children and adults in background noise.

This study compared the word recognition performance of 4 to 6 year old children and adults on the Word Intelligibility by Picture Identification (WIPI) Test presented via sound field in quiet and in a background of multitalker noise and pink noise. Although the adults had no difficulty recognizing speech in all situations, the children performed significantly poorer in both noise conditions. Furthermore, the multitalker noise proved to be more adverse than the pink noise on speech discrimination.