Objective: Lipreading, which plays a major role in the communication of the hearing impaired, lacked a French standardised tool. Our aim was to create and validate an audio-visual (AV) version of the French Matrix Sentence Test (FrMST). Design: Video recordings were created by dubbing the existing audio files. Sample: Thirty-five young, normal-hearing participants were tested in auditory and visual modalities alone (Ao, Vo) and in AV conditions, in quiet, noise, open and closed-set response formats. Results: Lipreading ability (Vo) varied from 1% to 77%-word comprehension. The absolute AV benefit was 9.25 dB SPL in quiet and 4.6 dB SNR in noise. The response format did not influence the results in the AV noise condition, except during the training phase. Lipreading ability and AV benefit were significantly correlated. Conclusions: The French video material achieved similar AV benefits as those described in the literature for AV MST in other languages. For clinical purposes, we suggest targeting SRT80 to avoid ceiling effects, and performing two training lists in the AV condition in noise, followed by one AV list in noise, one Ao list in noise and one Vo list, in a randomised order, in open or close set-format.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This work was funded by Fondation Pour l'Audition FPA RD-2020-10 (for LLR, TD, LHA, DL) and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (for GL, DFG, Cluster of Excellence EXC 1077/1 Hearing4all, and SFB1330 Projects B1 and C4). 

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Ethics committee of Comité de Protection des Personnes Tours-Region Centre-Ouest 1 gave ethical approval for this work. Project identification number 2020T317 RIPH3 HPS.

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