Scoring speech audiometry
This application relates to audiometric testing techniques. An example implementation is based on audibly providing a target word to a user and receiving a response of what the user audibly perceived in text form. The text is then converted into phonemes and compared with phonemes of the target word. In many examples, the process is repeated for multiple target words. The resulting comparison data can be used to determine the user's ability to hear and can be the basis for one or more treatment actions if the results reveal the user may suffer from hearing loss. The treatment actions can include providing the user with a hearing device or modifying an existing hearing device of the user.
1 . A computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:
select a target word from a plurality of words of an audiometric test;
provide test audio of the target word being pronounced;
obtain a user response as text data over a user interface;
generate a user response phonetic representation of the text data;
obtain a target word phonetic representation for the target word;
compare the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation to obtain a distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation;
determine an ability of a user to hear based on the distance; and
modify an auditory device of the user based on the determined ability of the user to hear.
2 . The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions executable to compare the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation to obtain the distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation comprise instructions executable to:
determine a score based on the distance, wherein the user response phonetic representation is determined based on a set of phonetic transcription codes or an alphabetic system of phonetic notation.
3 . The computer-readable medium of claim 2 , wherein the
distance is a Levenshtein distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation.
4 . The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions executable to generate the user response phonetic representation of the text data comprise instructions executable to:
perform a grapheme to phoneme conversion on the text data to generate the user response phonetic representation based on a dictionary or one or more pronunciation rules of a language.
5 . The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the target word is a consonant-vowel-consonant word, and wherein the instructions executable to compare the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation to obtain the distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation comprise instructions executable to:
determine a number and type of edits needed to convert the user response phonetic representation to the target word phonetic representation or vice versa.
6 . A method comprising:
providing, to a user, test audio that includes a target word being pronounced;
obtaining a user response from the user;
converting the user response into a user response phonetic representation;
converting the target word into a target word phonetic representation;
determining a distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation;
determining an ability of the user to hear based on the distance; and
modifying an auditory device of the user based on the determined ability of the user to hear.
7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein determining the ability of the user to hear includes:
determining particular phonemes that the user has difficulty hearing, wherein the difficulty is measured by a performance of the user on an audiometric test determined based on the distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation.
8 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the user response includes text data, and wherein converting the user response into a user response phonetic representation includes:
performing a grapheme to phoneme conversion on the text data to generate the user response phonetic representation.
9 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the user response includes audio data, and wherein converting the user response into a user response phonetic representation includes:
transcribing the audio data into one or more phonemes to generate the user response phonetic representation.
10 . The method of claim 6 , wherein modifying the auditory device of the user based on the determined ability of the user to hear includes:
automatically modifying a setting of the auditory device of the user based on the determined ability of the user to hear.
11 . The method of claim 6 , wherein converting the target word into the target word phonetic representation includes:
obtaining a plurality of phonetic representations for the target word; and
selecting a phonetic representation from the plurality of phonetic representations that best matches the user response phonetic representation as the target word phonetic representation.
12 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the user response phonetic representation is determined based on a set of phonetic transcription codes or an alphabetic system of phonetic notation, and wherein the distance is a Hamming distance or a Damerau-Levenshtein distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation.
13 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the distance is a Levenshtein distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation.
14 . The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
determining an amount of time between the test audio ending and beginning to receive the user response,
wherein the determining of the ability of the user to hear is further based on the amount of time.
15 . The method of claim 6 , wherein obtaining the user response phonetic representation includes:
obtaining a plurality of phonetic representations for the user response; and
selecting a phonetic representation from the plurality of phonetic representations that best matches the target word phonetic representation as the user response phonetic representation.
16 . A system comprising:
a text input component;
a sound output component;
one or more processors; and
memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:
provide, via the sound output component, test audio that includes a target word being pronounced;
obtain text data from the text input component;
generate a user response phonetic representation of the text data;
obtain a target word phonetic representation for the target word;
compare the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation to obtain a distance between the user response phonetic representation and the target word phonetic representation;
determine an ability of a user to hear based on the distance; and
modify an auditory device of the user based on the determined ability of the user to hear.
17 . The system of claim 16 , further comprising:
a first computing device including:
the sound output component;
the text input component, wherein the text input component is at least one of a physical keyboard or a virtual keyboard;
the one or more processors; and
the memory,
wherein the memory further stores instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
obtain the test audio from a second computing device remote from the first computing device.
18 . The system of claim 17 , wherein the first computing device is a consumer computing device and wherein the second computing device is a server.
19 . The system of claim 16 , wherein the sound output component is wirelessly-connected to the one or more processors, wherein the user response phonetic representation is generated by performing a grapheme to phoneme conversion on the text data based on a set of phonetic transcription codes or an alphabetic system of phonetic notation, and wherein the distance is determined based on one or more edit indicators associated with the user response phonetic representation or the target word phonetic representation.
20 . The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein modifying the auditory device of the user based on the determined ability of the user to hear includes:
adjusting a frequency gain of the auditory device of the user.