The present study had three main aims include: (I) to investigate visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual speech-in-noise (SiN) performance of Persian-speaking preschool-aged children with and without hearing loss (HL) using the preschool version of the Persian Lexical Neighborhood Tests (PLNTs-PV), (II) to compare visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual word-in-noise (WiN) performance of the children with hearing loss to their counterparts with normal hearing using the PLNTs-PV, and (III) to find the optimal execution conditions to measure auditory-only and audiovisual WiN recognition in preschool-aged children with and without HL using the PLNTs-PV as a lexically controlled test. As a cross-sectional study, the study was administered to Persian-speaking preschool-aged children with and without HL. As the children with HL had better WiN recognition performance in audiovisual stimulus mode than auditory-only one using the PLNTs-PV, they achieved audiovisual integration similar to their counterparts with NH. But, they performed auditory-only and audiovisual word recognition much poorer than those in the children with NH under spectrally degraded conditions. Therefore, we found optimal execution conditions to measure auditory-only and audiovisual SiN recognition in preschool-aged children with and without HL using lexically controlled tests.

Lexically controlled tests

audiovisual speech perception

speech-in-noise recognition

hearing loss

Persian-speaking children