JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Technological advances have allowed researchers to conduct research with remote participation. Online auditory testing has received interest since the Covid-19 pandemic and a number of web-based developments have improved the ‘auditory hygiene’ during remote participation. Most of these studies have been conducted in young, motivated individuals who are comfortable with using technology. Such studies have also used stimuli testing auditory perceptual abilities. Research on auditory cognitive abilities in real-world older adults is lacking.

Objective:

The main objective was to establish the reliability of different auditory cognitive tests across in-person and online experimentation.

Methods:

We assessed a range of auditory cognitive abilities in older adults, with a range of hearing abilities, who took part in in-person and online experiments. Participants performed a questionnaire-based assessment and were asked to complete two verbal speech-in-noise perception tasks, for digits and sentences, and two auditory memory tasks, for different sound features.

Results:

We found that older adults under the age of 75 and those with a better hearing were more likely to take part in online testing. The speech-in-noise perception tasks and auditory memory task for frequency were more reliable than the auditory memory task with amplitude modulated sounds, although all tests were acceptable. Important relationships between auditory metrics were recoverable online however, a larger sample size is necessary for adequate statistical power.

Conclusions:

Auditory cognitive testing can be conducted successfully online with a larger number of participants; however, tasks involving the processing of temporal modulations may be less reliable than those with a distinct pitch.