Portable Automated Rapid Testing ( PART ) of auditory processing abilities in young normally- hearing listeners: A remotely administered replication with participant-owned devices

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness of the need for robust and reliable remote testing of auditory function. Here, we examine how the recently introduced Portable Automatic Rapid Testing (PART) system–validated to produce precise psychoacoustical data in consumer hardware [Larrea-Mancera et al., JASA, 2020]—performs when data are collected remotely on participant-owned uncalibrated smart- phones. To accomplish this, we compare data collected remotely, to a published dataset that was collected in a lab- based sample using standardized calibrated hardware. Performance was examined in a group of 40 participants with PART assessments administered via a video-call. Results largely matched the normative dataset collected in the laboratory with, on average, slightly worse performance and similar repeatability; however, the rate of outlying performance increase for some assessments suggesting that some testing settings may not be appropriate for adequate data collection in some cases. These data suggest the feasibility of remote auditory testing on participants’ own devices for suprathreshold tests of auditory processing. Future work is needed to better determine the adequacy of different remote settings for reliable psychoacoustic data collection or clinical use.