Realistic assessment of hearing ability and device benefit

Current speech comprehension assessments do not provide a reliable measure of listeners' real-life speech comprehension ability, as they are not representative of complex and dynamic real-world communicative scenarios. To bridge the gap between laboratory-based assessment and real-world listening, the project will develop a new speech comprehension test using audio-visual recordings of spontaneous conversations between multiple talkers in realistic background noise. After measuring normative data, the developed test will then be applied to assess the real-world impact of hearing loss and the benefit provided by hearing aids.