Web-based psychoacoustics: Hearing screening, infrastructure, and validation

• Published in: Behavior research methods Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 1433 - 1448
• Main Authors: Mok, Brittany A., Viswanathan, Vibha, Borjigin, Agudemu, Singh, Ravinderjit, Kafi, Homeira, Bharadwaj, Hari M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.03.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Audiometry; Auditory discrimination; Auditory perception; Auditory Perception - physiology; Auditory Threshold - physiology; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Hearing; Hearing - physiology; Humans; Information processing; Internet; Medical screening; Psychoacoustics; Psychology; Sensory integration; Timing; Psychoacoustics; Crowd-sourcing; Web-based testing; Remote hearing screening; Online auditory experiments
• ISSN: 1554-3528; 1554-351X; 1554-3528
• DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02101-9

Anonymous web-based experiments are increasingly used in many domains of behavioral research. However, online studies of auditory perception, especially of psychoacoustic phenomena pertaining to low-level sensory processing, are challenging because of limited available control of the acoustics, and the inability to perform audiometry to confirm normal-hearing status of participants. Here, we outline our approach to mitigate these challenges and validate our procedures by comparing web-based measurements to lab-based data on a range of classic psychoacoustic tasks. Individual tasks were created using jsPsych, an open-source JavaScript front-end library. Dynamic sequences of psychoacoustic tasks were implemented using Django, an open-source library for web applications, and combined with consent pages, questionnaires, and debriefing pages. Subjects were recruited via Prolific, a subject recruitment platform for web-based studies. Guided by a meta-analysis of lab-based data, we developed and validated a screening procedure to select participants for (putative) normal-hearing status based on their responses in a suprathreshold task and a survey. Headphone use was standardized by supplementing procedures from prior literature with a binaural hearing task. Individuals meeting all criteria were re-invited to complete a range of classic psychoacoustic tasks. For the re-invited participants, absolute thresholds were in excellent agreement with lab-based data for fundamental frequency discrimination, gap detection, and sensitivity to interaural time delay and level difference. Furthermore, word identification scores, consonant confusion patterns, and co-modulation masking release effect also matched lab-based studies. Our results suggest that web-based psychoacoustics is a viable complement to lab-based research. Source code for our infrastructure is provided.