Comparing SCAN-A Scores between Speakers of Standard Australian English and American English: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

The SCAN-A: Test for Auditory Processing Disorders in Adolescents and Adults is currently used in Australia with normative data derived from speakers of standard American English. The present study aimed to compare preliminary normative data for SCAN-A for speakers of standard Australian English to those of standard American English. A total of 32 normal hearing adults aged between 18 and 47 years participated in this study. They were given all four subtests of the SCAN-A test. The Kolmogorov- Smirnov two-sample test was used to determine whether there was any significant difference in mean scores for each of the SCAN-A subtests and the test total between the Australian sample and the reported American normative data. The results of the study found a significant difference in mean scores between the Australian sample and the American normative data for the Filtered Words subtest and the Competing Sentences subtest. The Australian sample obtained a lower mean score for the Filtered Words subtest and a higher mean score for the Competing Sentences subtest. No significant difference in mean scores was found for the other subtests and the composite score. Overall, the performance of the SCAN-A in the Australian sample was similar to that of the American population. The results of this preliminary study stress the need for caution when interpreting the results of the Filtered Words subtest and the Competing Sentence subtest for the Australian population.