A§E Phoneme Identification

A§E (pronounced [eis] like the play card ace) is a set of psycho-acoustical tests to be used by the professional audiologist.  It is conceived to test hearing impaired children and adults who are typically aided with a conventional hearing aid, cochlear implant or other device.  Most tests are speech- and language independent and supraliminal (above-threshold).  It is recommended to use A§E with a conventional audiometer.  No additional equipment is required. A§E can also run with one of Audiqueen’s audio solutions, such as an amplifier and loudspeakers, the Otocube, Coala Link, SoundC or even with nothing else than a set of good quality multimedia loudspeakers.

   If used with anything else than a certified audiometer, the output sound levels depend on the soundcard used.  Very soft sounds may not be presented and very loud presentation levels may cause distortion.  With this configuration the audio solution does not qualify as an audiometer according to ISO standards.

The phoneme identification test uses commonly used phonemes in many languages.  All phonemes have been loudness balanced. Intensity roving is applied in a range of ±3 dB.  The test consists of forced-choice picture pointing task.

A§E phoneme identification test results. Each column (left) represents a different test session with its own date and configuration of the hearing aids. Each session also comes with its confusion matrix (right)

A powerful feature of A§E consists of the possibility to use the test engine of the phoneme identification to build your own psychoacoustic test.

Have a look at the instructional videos to learn how to build your own identification test.