One checks how loud speech needs to be for you to hear it.
The other checks how clearly you can understand and distinguish different words when you hear them spoken.
What Happens During the Test
The tests take 10-15 minutes. You are seated in a sound booth and wear headphones. You will hear a recording of a list of common words spoken at different volumes, and be asked to repeat those words.
Your audiologist will ask you to repeat a list of words to determine your speech reception threshold (SRT) or the lowest volume at which you can hear and recognize speech.
Then, the audiologist will measure speech discrimination — also called word recognition ability. He or she will either say words to you or you will listen to a recording, and then you will be asked to repeat the words. The audiologist will measure your ability to understand speech at a comfortable listening level.
Getting Speech Audiology Test Results
The audiologist will share your test results with you at the completion of testing. Speech discrimination ability is typically measured as a percentage score.