DIN-test DEMO

DIN-test DEMO

Dear participants of the ARO symposium, Internet&Audiology conference, and visitors of this forum,

On this webpage, you can self-administer a remote hearing test via a headset. The measurements are performed with the purpose of training and education. Results are stored compliant with HIPAA and GDPR regulations by HearX. Anonymous data may be displayed for training and demonstration purposes.

Digits-in-Noise test (DIN)

This hearing test does not replace the services of a certified audiologist. If you have concerns about your hearing please seek a certified service provider for complete hearing evaluation. For details about validity and limitations read the disclaimer embedded in the test.

The test determines how well you can understand speech in background noise. The procedure can be performed with headphones or loudspeakers. During the test you hear combinations of three digits overlaid with noise. The understood combinations of digits are entered via a number pad on the screen.  After the test, you will receive an assessment of how good your speech comprehension is compared to normal hearing.

After the test, your result is added to the aggregated results which will be shown below as soon as we have collected enough valid results.

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Above you see the SRT versus age of 118 delegates who took the DIN-test during the ARO symposium. The high fail rate could be indicative for subjects testing in free field since then no improvement due to binaural phase differences is feasible. We did not perform a headphone test as recommended by Josh McDermott in his talk.

Background

The DIN test was originally developed and clinically validated in Amsterdam by Theo Kapteyn, Tammo Houtgast and Cas Smits among others (Smits et al. 2004). One of its advantages compared to other speech in noise tests is that subjects can easily respond using buttons to indicate numbers which facilitates self-administration. The level of required linguistic skills is modest making the test suitable for children and less sensitive top-down listening strategies. The idea for a telephone-based screening test originated from Theo Kapteyn. The first population-wide application of the DIN-test was the National Hearing Test in the Netherlands. The National Hearing Test was a telephone-based (2004) and internet-based (2005) screening tool. In 2013 Cas Smits demonstrated that the test can be applied for clinical diagnostic purposes. In this study, Smits et al (2013) compared the DIN-test to the speech-in-noise test that is the golden standard in the Netherlands.

Recently the sensitivity of the test for screening purposes has been improved by testing binaurally using anti-phasic digits (De Sousa et al. 2020).  At the VCCA2020, Sigrid Polspoel explains in a 2 minute clip how the DIN-test was developed and presents on-going efforts, the Aladdin project, to make the DIN-test available in any language. Karina de Sousa created an informative clip on how the DIN-test can be used in the clinical care pathway as a triage tool for classifying types of hearing loss.

References

  • De Sousa, K. C., Swanepoel, D. W., Moore, D. R., Myburgh, H. C., & Smits, C. (2020). Improving Sensitivity of the Digits-In-Noise Test Using Antiphasic Stimuli. Ear and Hearing, 41(2), 442–450. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.000000000000077
  • Potgieter, J.-M., Swanepoel, D. W., Myburgh, H. C., Hopper, T. C., & Smits, C. (2016). Development and validation of a smartphone-based digits-in-noise hearing test in South African English. International Journal of Audiology, 55(7), 405–411. https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2016.1172269
  • Potgieter, J.-M., Swanepoel, D. W., Myburgh, H. C., & Smits, C. (2018). The South African English smartphone digits-in-noise hearing test: Effect of age, hearing loss, and speaking competence. Ear and Hearing, 39(4), 656–663.
  • Smits, C., Kapteyn, T. S., & Houtgast, T. (2004). Development and validation of an automatic speech-in-noise screening test by telephone. International Journal of Audiology, 43(1), 15–28.

  • Smits, Cas, Theo Goverts, S., & Festen, J. M. (2013). The digits-in-noise test: Assessing auditory speech recognition abilities in noise. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 133(3), 1693–1706. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4789933

Other Resources

  • Other online resources can be found here
  • Last year Chris Stecker, chair of the ASA P&P Task Force on Remote Testing, performed a survey to collect experiences and resources for remote testing. A wiki-based webpage is created that contains discussions, best practices and links to other resources related to remote testing.
  • The Hörtech expert center developed also a web-based implementation of the DIN-test.