FreeHear: A New Sound-Field Speech-in-Babble Hearing Assessment Tool.
David R Moore, Helen Whiston, Melanie Lough and 4 others
PMID 31599206WHAT IT FOUND
A sound-field digits-in-noise test produced reliable speech-in-noise scores in children from 5 years old and adults.
Children's scores improved with age, and four-year-olds often could not finish, so use age norms and expect incomplete tests in very young children.
Key findings
01Repeating the test gave similar speech-in-noise scores for children and adults across the two speaker arrangements.
02Children's scores on the test improved with age, and the authors estimated adult-like scores by about 14 to 15 years.
03Moving the babble to the side gave a slight score benefit, but the change was not significant and did not differ reliably between children and adults.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only participants with normal hearing or at most slight hearing loss, so it does not show how FreeHear performs in people with hearing impairment. Four-year-olds often could not finish the full test, so the youngest children are not well represented. The adult sample was only 18 to 30 years old, so it does not cover older adults. The estimate of adult-like performance at 14 to 15 years assumes the age trend continues linearly beyond the tested 13-year limit. The talker used a slight northern British English accent, and the authors note that accent and second-language effects are only beginning to be explored. The babble masker may add variability and make the test less sensitive than speech-shaped noise in some cases. The authors state the data are not fully representative of eventual clinical data because some variability came from interdigit differences, and they expect a normalized version to be more accurate. The study describes initial development and reliability in normal hearing, not diagnostic accuracy or effectiveness for monitoring hearing aids or cochlear implants.
Declared interests
The article is marked as supported by NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support; no author conflict-of-interest statement is provided in the text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use FreeHear as a validated diagnostic test for hearing impairment. The paper tested children and young adults with normal hearing or at most slight loss, and says further clinical trial design is needed.