Checking your hearing

HearCom will eventually provide you with the ability to check your hearing on line. People who have a hearing loss do not only experience problems detecting quiet sounds, but also experience difficulties with communication in noisy environments and sound localization – the ability to tell where a sound is coming from.

A person’s ability to perform these tasks provides information about their hearing status. HearCom will provide three different tests, which will measure your ability to perform these tasks and give you an indication of your hearing ability:

  1. Speech in noise test; this test will measure your ability to understand speech when played against background noise and will therefore provide information how well your ear works.
  2. Sound localisation test; this test will measure your ability to hear where sounds are coming from - and will therefore provide information as to how well your ears work together.
  3. Questionnaire; this test will subjectively measure how well you can cope in difficult situations in which you have to rely on your hearing.

The tests are currently in development. After they have been validated we hope to make them freely available on this site. The target date for the first test is December 2007.

These screening tests should not be confused with the diagnostic tests that are conducted by hearing professionals (e.g. full hearing tests, such as audiometry, tympanometry, sentence in noise test). Screening tests are intended only to provide a “first impression” of your hearing. Screening tests are less susceptible to environmental issues such as acoustics since they contain stimuli that are clearly audible. Hence, they can be safely conducted at home in a quiet room using a PC equipped with sound card. Diagnostic tests carried out by hearing professionals are usually conducted in a controlled environment using special equipment providing a higher accuracy.

 

Access to the tests when participating in the HearCom user trial (will require login and password)