Would You Be Able To Hear Commands In A Combat Situation?

Academics at the University of Southampton have developed anew hearing test, specifically aimed at Military Personnel.

Traditional hearing tests ask subjects to listen in silence to a series of beeps as they gradually get quieter.

As you can imagine, this is very far removed from a combat situation in which commands must be heard above the sounds of battle.

At the University, researchers have developed a new way to test hearing specifically aimed at our troops.

In the new test, participants must identify call sign, colour, and number - the sort of thing that would be delivered in a real radio message, against true to life background static.

This, the researchers believe, is much more realistic than the conventional hearing test.

Dr Hannah Semeraro, a lecturer in audiology, said of the new technology:

“We’re looking at assessing soldiers hearing in a way that is a more real-world listening situation. Rather than just listening to beeps, we’re focusing on hearing commands on top of background noise, something that’s a little bit more real-life”.

The man who provided the voice on the test is Dr Daniel Rowan, he said:

"Research has been funded by the royal centre for defence medicine, as a part of their Hear Well programme. The point of that programme is to better prevent, detect and treat hearing loss when it develops in defence personnel”.

This new test is portable and can be used by anyone with a tablet, making it far more accessible than the old beep test.

The team at Southampton will now be working on a follow-up study to see whether the test can be used to predict soldiers’ auditory fitness for duty.