Our hearing tends to deteriorate as we age - this is well-known and well-studied.

However, most studies have looked at hearing deterioration across entire populations, rather than at the individual level - we know comparatively little about how much an individual's own hearing changes year-by-year as they age.

This means we have yet to thoroughly explore how we can develop individualised predictions for someone’s future hearing.

Professor Michael Akeroyd and his team at the University of Nottingham have developed a new test of hearing aimed to be precise, to be able to be carried out repeatedly over the course of a few months, and to be easy to do, especially at home without any specialist equipment.

The team will measure this test's reliability when carried out by participants at home, over the course of a year, and will assess whether it can successfully identify speech-in-noise hearing deterioration.

They will also explore practical considerations such as practice effects, gaps in data collection, attrition rate, and acceptability to participants.

What is 'speech-in-noise'?

Speech-in-noise (SiN) perception is the ability to identify spoken words when background noise is present.

This ability is crucial for effective communication in everyday environments where there is often competing noise from various sources.

Speech-in-noise tasks are commonly used in research and clinical settings to assess auditory processing abilities and to diagnose conditions such as auditory processing disorder (APD) or hearing loss.