The 3rd clarity prediction challenge: a machine learning challenge for hearing aid speech intelligibility prediction

Barker, Jon, Akeroyd, Michael A., Cox, Trevor J., Culling, John F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1107-9802, Firth, Jennifer, Graetzer, Simone and Naylor, Graham 2026. The 3rd clarity prediction challenge: a machine learning challenge for hearing aid speech intelligibility prediction. Presented at: 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain, 3-8 May 2026. ICASSP 2026 - 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing. IEEE; 1999, pp. 14472-14476. 10.1109/icassp55912.2026.11461465

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Abstract

This paper reports on the design and outcomes of the third Clarity Prediction Challenge (CPC3) on predicting the intelligibility of hearing-aid processed speech. CPC3 is the final round in a series of UKRI-funded challenges to advance intelligibility prediction models. Building on CPC1 (2022) and CPC2 (2023), it introduces a larger dataset of intelligibility scores from listeners who have hearing loss, additional hearing-aid processors, and more complex acoustic scenes. Unlike previous rounds, the evaluation set contained entirely unseen scenes and algorithms, providing a stronger test of generalisation. This paper describes the publicly available dataset, challenge tasks, and outcomes. CPC3 attracted 21 systems from 15 teams. Results show that reference-free systems based on pre-trained transformer models, which had shown promise in CPC2, perform strongly under the more demanding CPC3 conditions. The best system achieved a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 24.98% beating the Hearing Aid Speech Perception Index (HASPI) baseline by 4.49% absolute. We also examine the complementarity among top systems; failure cases including listener outliers, and implications for future challenge designs and evaluations.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Additional Information:	RRS policy applied
Publisher:	IEEE; 1999
ISBN:	979-8-3315-6702-6
ISSN:	1520-6149
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 June 2026
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2026 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186872

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