The new Mainz Audiometric Test for Children aged 3-7 years (MATCH) in noise : Design, normalization, and validation.

BACKGROUND: The Mainz Audiometric Test for Children (MATCH) was originally developed for children aged 3-7 years and validated in quiet conditions. OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to extend the MATCH to testing in noise, to establish normative data, and to validate the test under these conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 103 children aged 3 years and 3 months to 7 years and 7 months participated, including 76 with normal hearing and 27 with a hearing impairment. Recruitment took place via local kindergartens (mainly normal-hearing children) and the Department of Phoniatry and Pediatric Audiology at the University Medical Center Mainz (mainly hearing-impaired children). To account for age-specific differences, children were divided into three groups: (1) < 4.5 years (n = 28), (2) 4.5-5.5 years (n = 35), (3) > 5.5 years (n = 40). Testing was performed monaurally using a touchscreen-based picture-pointing task, with adaptive determination of the speech reception threshold (SRT) in noise. RESULTS: The SRTs improved with age: -4.6 dB SNR (< 4.5 years), -7.4 dB SNR (4.5-5.5 years), and -9.3 dB SNR (> 5.5 years) at 71.4% speech intelligibility. The slope of the psychometric functions increased with age, while variability and test duration decreased. Test-retest reliability was high (r = 0.84), and results correlated significantly with pure-tone audiometry (r = 0.75). CONCLUSION: The MATCH in noise is a reliable and child-appropriate tool for assessing speech reception thresholds as early as preschool age. It addresses a methodological gap in existing procedures, which typically provide valid results only from school age onwards, and enables early and differentiated evaluation of hearing aid outcomes in children with hearing impairment.