Applications of automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies for hearing assessment: a scoping review

Exploring applications of automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies in hearing assessment and evaluations of hearing aids.

Review protocol was registered at the INPLASY database and was performed following the PRISMA scoping review guidelines. A search in ten databases was conducted in January 2023 and updated in June 2024.

Studies that used automatic speech recognition or text-to-speech to assess measures of hearing ability (e.g. speech reception threshold), or to configure hearing aids were retrieved. Of the 2942 records found, 28 met the inclusion criteria.

The results indicated that text-to-speech could effectively replace recorded stimuli in speech intelligibility tests, requiring less effort for experimenters, without negatively impacting outcomes (n = 5). Automatic speech recognition captured verbal responses accurately, allowing for reliable speech reception threshold measurements without human supervision (n = 7). Moreover, automatic speech recognition was employed to simulate participants' hearing, with high correlations between simulated and empirical data (n = 14). Finally, automatic speech recognition was used to optimise hearing aid configurations, leading to higher speech intelligibility for wearers compared to the original configuration (n = 3).

There is the potential for automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech systems to enhance accessibility of, and efficiency in, hearing assessments, offering unsupervised testing options, and facilitating hearing aid personalisation.