A “Gamified” Test of Speech Recognition in Background Noise

What is it about?

Understanding what people say in crowded restaurants and parties is hard for most people. This problem drives thousands of patients to audiologic clinics each year. The tests that audiologists use to assess this ability are tedious and often don’t reflect the real-world problems that patients report. Our research group is developing new “gamified” tests that are fun and interactive ways to test the ability to understand speech in noise. Here, we show that a simple gamified test produces the same results as the traditional non-gamified test. Participants were willing to play the gamified test for longer periods of time, which enabled better estimation of their true speech understanding abilities.

Featured Image

Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash

Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This is a promising first step towards implementation of gamified tests in audiology clinics. Current clinical tests differ considerably from real-world listening and their results do not always align with patient reports of difficulty. This problem is frustrating for both patients and audiologists and can lead to poor satisfaction with hearing healthcare. Gamification may be a means of improving the patient experience with clinical testing and provide the audiologist with a better understanding of the patient’s real-world communication abilities.

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