Evaluation of Hearing-Critical MOS/Mission Performance Capabilities

This proposal outlines a novel methodology to assess a series of auditory and auditory psychophysical tests to comprehensively evaluate an individual’s ability to perform hearing critical tasks specific to an assortment of Military Occupational Specialties (MOS). Hearing critical tasks are functions that require hearing abilities, such as localization, or the ability to understand speech in noise (Soli, 2003). Hearing critical tasks for the following 6 MOS will be identified: Series 11 –infantry, series 13 – artillery, series 18 – special operations, series 19 – armor, series 88 transportation, and series 91 – medic. Specific tasks for each MOS will be identified and the importance of a number of all significant audiometric components of the task will be rated, such as localization, speech intelligibility, pitch differentiation, etc. For the critical to moderately-critical tasks, a battery of quick and high confidence tests will be developed to evaluate an individual’s ability to perform auditorily in a given MOS. A minimally sized kiosk or test suite will be prototyped to administer the tests and instantaneous feedback and ratings for each parameter of hearing will be displayed to the test administrator or audiologist. Scores will be added according to significance of the task it pertains and an PULHES “H” position grade will be given to a candidate thus effectively evaluating the overall hearing system for a given MOS.