Feasibility of remote assessment of the binaural intelligibility level difference in school-age children

Abstract

This work evaluated the feasibility and reliability of remotely assessing masked speech recognition and the binaural intelligibility level difference (BILD) in children. Participants were 28 children (6–17 years) and 11 adults (22–45 years) with self-reported normal hearing. A three-alternative forced-choice word recognition task was completed using participants' personal hardware (headphones and computer) and custom software that uploaded results to a central database. Results demonstrate that assessment of masked speech recognition and the BILD is feasible and generally reliable in a remote setting. Variability of results across individuals would likely have been reduced by distributing or specifying appropriate headphones.

Effects of word familiarity and receptive vocabulary size on speech-in-noise recognition among young adults with normal hearing

“…The results of the present study contribute to the growing body of evidence that remote testing is a feasible method of gathering data on speech recognition [ 39 – 41 ]. Laboratory hardware was delivered to listeners’ homes, limiting inconsistencies related to the use of personal computers and headphones [ 39 ].…”

“…The results of the present study contribute to the growing body of evidence that remote testing is a feasible method of gathering data on speech recognition [ 39 – 41 ]. Laboratory hardware was delivered to listeners’ homes, limiting inconsistencies related to the use of personal computers and headphones [ 39 ]. Remote testing options are appealing beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for those without access to traditional laboratory environments and/or when recruiting participants across a wide geographical region.…”

FORUM: Remote testing for psychological and physiological acoustics

“…Hence, a potential obstacle for remote testing is variability in the stimulus quality due to different audio hardware used by participants. Depending on the platform chosen, the variability may be introduced along the continuum from take-home deployment with specific devices delivered to participants (de Larrea-Mancera et al, 2020) to web-based deployment, which participants can access with their own hardware and software (Merchant et al, 2021;Shapiro et al, 2020).…”

“…For example, data loss may occur on individual trials due to momentary interruptions or distractions in the test environment or technical issues, such as dropped audio, when streaming stimuli or responses. Future work is needed to compare task performance using in-person and remote testing procedures to address this issue (Merchant et al, 2021;Whitton et al, 2016).…”

“…Remote testing also provides flexibility with respect to scheduling and alleviates the stress for participants and their caregivers, which can be associated with travel for in-person visits to the laboratory. This is particularly important for research that engages special populations, such as individuals with rare diseases and families with young children (Dial et al, 2019;Merchant et al, 2021). When research participation occurs in the home environment, it also enhances the feasibility of longitudinal studies such as those that include training (Whitton et al, 2017).…”