Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jun 21, 2020
Date Accepted: Feb 10, 2021
Speech Banana: design and development of an mHealth application for auditory training
ABSTRACT
Background:
With a growing adult population worldwide that uses electronic hearing devices such as cochlear implants or hearing aids, there is an increasing need for auditory training (AT) to promote optimal device use. However, financial resources and scheduling conflicts make clinical AT infeasible.
Objective:
To address this gap between need and accessibility, an affordable, mobile AT application (app) called Speech Banana has been developed
Methods:
Speech Banana has been implemented for American English and Korean languages on two platforms: iOS for iPad, and HTML5, Javascript, CSS and MongoDB for the web. The app consists of 38 lessons, which each includes an analytic exercise pairing printed words and/or phrases with auditory stimuli, and a synthetic quiz that presents sentences in auditory form only. During quizzes, the user types the sentence heard, and the app then provides feedback. The user can select a male or female speaker and the background noise level. This allows users to train for a range of frequencies and signal-to-noise ratios, mimicking the rich sound landscape of daily life with approximately 1170 pairs of words and 1000 pairs of sentences for the American English version and exactly 950 pairs of sentences for the Korean version.
Results:
More than 3100 downloads of the iPad app and 15 registered users of the web app, and more than 70 downloads and 20 registered users, were recorded respectively for the American English and Korean versions. Screenshots of app interfaces in different platforms including smartphones demonstrate the portability and extensibility of the app.
Conclusions:
By engaging users with an intuitive design and motivating them using a variety of challenges, Speech Banana offers AT accessibility and greater opportunities for self-management of hearing loss through mobile devices including smartphones. It also has great potential as a supplement to clinical AT sessions.
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