The Lexical Neighborhood Test: Test-Retest Reliability and Inter-List Equivalency1

This study examined the reliability and inter-list equivalency of two new recorded spoken word recognition measures, the Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) and the Multisyllabic Lexical Neighborhood Test (MLNT), and evaluated the effects of lexical difficulty on spoken word recognition by children with hearing loss. Participants were 16 children with prelingual, profound deafness who used a cochlear implant. Testretest reliability was high and no significant inter-list differences were observed for both measures. In addition, we found that lexically “easy” words (i.e., those that occur often and have few phonemically words with which they are similar) were recognized correctly more often than lexically “hard” words (i.e., those with opposite characteristics). The results demonstrate that the LNT and MLNT provide reliable information about spoken word recognition abilities of children with profound hearing loss who use cochlear implants. In addition, these new measures also provide more detailed information about the way in which these children organize and access spoken words from long-term lexical memory.