The HINT was administered as a second test of sentence intelligibility in noise. For this investigation, two blocks of ten sentences were used for each condition. Listeners were required to repeat sentences spoken by a male talker in the presence of a speech-shaped noise, which was presented at a fixed level of 65 dBA. The level of the speech stimuli was adjusted adaptively until a Speech Reception Threshold (SRT) was determined. The SRT was defined as the SNR necessary for a listener to recognize the speech materials correctly 50 % of the time. Correct identification of each sentence was based on proper repetition of all words of the sentence, with minor exceptions. These exceptions related to the fact that small substitutions in verb tense and the articles "a" and "the" were allowed without scoring a sentence as incorrect. Presentation level of the sentences was adjusted based on the subjects' responses (an incorrect response raised the level; a correct response lowered the level for the next sentence). The level was varied in 4 dB steps for the first 5 trials, and 2 dB steps for the final 15 trials.