Charles S. Watson

The National Hearing Test (NHT) is a telephone-administered screen for hearing loss (Watson et al., J. Am. Acad. Audiol., 2012) that obtains thresholds for three-digit sequences in a noise background. The NHT has been validated by comparing threshold SNR values to mean pure-tone loss. During five weeks in 2014 the NHT was offered without charge to the general public. Over 40,000 calls were made after articles describing the test appeared in eight large-circulation and 19 smaller circulation newspapers, estimated to reach less than 10% of the US public. Among those who completed the test, 81% were estimated to have clinically significant loss in one or both ears. Call numbers suggested that 88% were made from landlines and the remainder from cell phones. Threshold SNRs for cell phones were about 1.0 dB higher than those for landline phones. Samples of the callers were later contacted through telephone and email surveys. Responses indicated a positive influence in terms of the likelihood of seeking further evaluation and obtaining hearing aids if advised to do so. [Research supported by the National Institute for Deafness and other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health under award number 5R44DC009719.]

SPATS is evaluated as a testing and training system for hearing‐aid (HA) users and cochlear‐implant (CI) users. Criterion measures include the HINT, CNC tests, W22 tests, and Coxs CDT, parts of Gatehouses SSQ and a special SPATS inventory. SPATS measures include the identification of syllable constituents (onsets, nuclei, and codas) and measures of top‐down and combined top‐down and bottom‐up recognizing spoken sentences. Control subjects were measured on criterion and SPATS tests, and then retested after a pause of several weeks. Trained subjects took all of the same tests, but in the time between first and second testing underwent either 12 or 24 hours of systematic training using special SPATS algorithms that focus training on items of intermediate difficulty in quiet and noise. Trained subjects show gains on speech‐perception measures in quiet and noise, and in look‐and‐listen tasks, even though there was no training of visual speech perception. Subjects report that SPATS training and testing gave them a much clearer understanding of the severity of their hearing impairments and led to improved speech perception in everyday life through greater attention to detail, and to differences between talkers. [Supported by Grant No. R44DC006338 from NIH/NIDCD.]

The goal was to determine whether the ability to learn complex auditory discrimination and identification tasks could be predicted from performance on a screening test battery. The screening battery included auditory tasks chosen on the basis of earlier factor‐analytic studies of individual differences [Kidd et al. JASA 122, 418–435 (2007)], visual acuity tasks, and a test of working memory. These tests were administered to 1,000 college students with normal audiograms. Based on screening test performance, 25 exceptional performers and 25 average performers were selected for prolonged training on three new auditory tasks. The training tasks included multi‐tone pattern discrimination, identification of a vocabulary of sequences of three‐tone syllables, and binary categorization of multi‐dimensional profile‐like stimuli. A broad range of individual differences in post‐training performance was observed on each of these tasks, but differences were not well predicted by screening task performance or estimated general intelligence. Analysis of the screening task performance supported the previously reported independence of individual differences in spectral‐temporal acuity and the recognition of familiar sounds (both speech and nonspeech). Intellectual abilities and visual processing abilities were also independent of each other and of auditory abilities. [Work supported by Grant No. N000140310644 from the Office of Naval Research.]