Charactering the individual ear by the "Auditory Profile"

This paper describes a new approach to auditory diagnostics, which is one of the central themes of the EU-project HEARCOM. For this purpose we defined a so-called "Auditory Profile" that can be assessed for each individual listener using a standardized battery of audiological tests that - in addition to the pure-tone audiogram - focus on loudness perception, frequency resolution, temporal acuity, speech perception, binaural functioning, listening effort, subjective hearing abilities, and cognition. For the sake of testing time only summary tests are included from each of these areas, but the broad approach of characterizing auditory communication problems by means of standardized test is expected to have an added value above traditional testing in understanding the reasons for poor speech reception. The Auditory profile may also be relevant in the field of auditory rehabilitation and for design of acoustical environments. The results of an international 5-center study (in 4 countries and in 4 languages) will be presented and the relevance of a broad but well-standardized approach will be discussed