Feasibility of remote assessment of the binaural intelligibility level difference in school-age children

This work evaluated the feasibility and reliability of remotely assessing masked speech recognition and the binaural intelligibility level difference (BILD) in children. Participants were 28 children (6-17 years) and 11 adults (22-45 years) with self-reported normal hearing. A three-alternative forced-choice word recognition task was completed using participants' personal hardware (headphones and computer) and custom software that uploaded results to a central database. Results demonstrate that assessment of masked speech recognition and the BILD is feasible and generally reliable in a remote setting. Variability of results across individuals would likely have been reduced by distributing or specifying appropriate headphones.