This hearing test is tuned to a patient’s hearing level and changes based on performance to accurately diagnose hearing ability

Currently, no single hearing evaluation can determine multiple facets of an individual’s hearing ability. For example, some tests may determine hearing awareness at specific frequencies, but gather no data regarding speech understanding. Others may test understanding, but are limited to specific languages and, thus, are not generalizable. Furthermore, previous attempts to assess linguistic understanding at various levels of background noise levels suffer from the inability to compare different tests and different levels making changes after intervention difficult to track.

This hearing test involves testing the components of speech and language at different levels of loudness and background noise. Furthermore, this test is language agnostic and, therefore, can be administered to a broad patient population. The testing is performed in an adaptive manner so that a wide range of abilities can be incorporated into a single testing paradigm.

A method whereby the hearing level and speech perception abilities of a patient is determined. Test stimuli are provided to the patient and the patient is presented with three stimuli, from which they must identify one stimulus that is different from the other two. The patient must choose between the three (forced choice, in an “odd one out” paradigm) in order for the test to progress. Whether the patient makes the correct choice determines the course of the test via an adaptive algorithm that tailors subsequent stimuli to target the patient’s hearing ability. The test stimuli will be comprised of the sounds that make up portions of words and form the building blocks of language.

• The test is presented at a loudness determined to be adequate for that person’s hearing level, without background noise, and to either (or both) ears.
• The ability is scored on multiple domains based on a validated set of scores from people of all hearing abilities.
• This test is language-agnostic and, therefore, can be applied broadly to diverse patient populations.