Acquisition of auditory profiles for good and impaired hearing

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop a user-friendly way of measuring patients’ threshold and supra-threshold hearing, with potential for application in clinical research. The end-product of these tests is a graphical profile summarizing absolute threshold, frequency selectivity, and compression characteristics across a spectrum of frequencies (0.25–6 kHz). Design: A battery of three psychophysical hearing tests consisted of measures of absolute threshold, frequency selectivity, and compression. An automated, cued, single-interval, adaptive tracking procedure was employed. The tests results were collated and used to generate a readily visualized ‘profile’ for each listener. Study sample: Participants were 83 adults (57 impaired-hearing and 26 good-hearing, age 20–75 years). Results: Listeners tolerated the tests well. Single-ear profiles were obtained in an average of 74 minutes testing time (range 46–120 minutes). The variability of individual measurements was low. Substantial differences between normal and impaired listeners and also among the impaired listeners were observed. Qualitative differences in compression and frequency-selectivity were seen that could not be predicted by threshold measurements alone. Conclusions: The hearing profiles are informative with respect to supra-threshold hearing performance and the information is easily accessible through the graphical display. Further development is required for routine use in a clinical context.

Key Words::

• Auditory profiles
• supra-threshold measurements
• normal and impaired hearing

Notes

1. The software is available from the authors on request.

2. The complete set of profiles is available from the authors on request.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants for donating time and effort to the study, the collaborators of Phonak and the Hearing Care Centre in Colchester for all the advice and support, and finally to three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on preliminary versions of the manuscript.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no declarations of interest. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC).