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Hearing Aid and Aural Rehabilitation (HAAR) Research Lab
Current Research
Current Research
Masking Level Difference with Digits (MLDD) in Children
(Collaborative Research with Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL)
The Masking Level Difference with Digits (MLDD) is a new test developed by Mayo Clinic to address the need for a speech-in-noise test that is linguistically primitive. The test rationale is that digits are overlearned speech stimuli and thus may require minimal linguistic processing. The test also measures the binaural release from masking effect – an ability that may diminish with central auditory nervous system (CANS) dysfunction.
The anticipated clinical benefits for the test are numerous including evaluating pediatric patients with CANS dysfunction (e.g. patients with Auditory Processing Disorders, auditory neuropathy and learning disabilities). However, the clinical administration of the test has been limited due to the lack of pediatric test norms. Much remains unknown regarding the developmental time course of the MLDD performance in children, and how age, hearing loss, ear disease, and neurological impairment influence test performance.
Phase I: The goal of phase I is to evaluate age effects on test performance, and to establish pediatric test norms.
Phase II:
To investigate the effects of hearing loss on the MLDD test performance; and how age and hearing loss may interact to influence test results in pediatric listeners.
To determine whether MLDD test results correlate with self-report/subjective assessments of functional hearing.
Phase III: To explore the test’s utility in screening for hearing loss and otologic and neurologic disease involving the central auditory nervous system.
Effects of Hearing Aid Use and Auditory Training on Listening Effort and Fatigue, and Auditory Selective Attention in New and Experienced Hearing Aid Users
Many commercially available, computerized auditory training programs, such as “Read My Quips” (RMQ), Listening and Communication Enhancement (LACE) and Customized Learning Exercises for Aural Rehabilitation (cLEAR) are designed to improve speech understanding in the presence of background noise.
In a previous experiment, we have studied auditory training effects on a speech-in-noise task and a selective attention paradigm using measures of auditory evoked response potentials (Rao et al. 2016). The results demonstrate that training with RMQ improves hearing-aid users’ speech-in-noise perception as well as confidence in the auditory selective attention task.
Similarly, subjects trained with LACE showed significant improvements on standardized clinical speech in noise tests (Song et al. 2012). The extent of benefit was even greater for new hearing aid users compared to experienced users (Olson et al. 2013). Customized Learning Exercises for Aural Rehabilitation (cLEAR) training program also demonstrates the potential for improving patient’s speech in noise abilities. Hearing-impaired patients trained with cLEAR (n=47) improved significantly in their abilities to discriminate words in noise. These improvements were sustained 3 months following training (Tye-Murray et al, 2010).
Further, auditory training programs may alleviate listening effort and reduce demands of cognitive resources in patients with hearing loss. Specifically, training with cLEAR has been shown to significantly reduce listening effort. In a study by Sommers et al. (2015), listening effort was measured immediately following training with cLEAR using a modified version of the n-back memory task, a task that records changes in recall. The patients were presented with a list of words and were asked to update their memory of the three most recently heard words. Compared to pre-training, patients were able to remember more than one additional word after 12 hours of training.
The goals of our current research (which will be implemented in at least 3-4 studies and span over 4-5 years) will include the following:
To examine the effects of hearing aid use and auditory training on listening effort, using psychophysiological indices of listening effort, including recordings of heart rate, skin conductance, and skin temperature.
To examine the effects of hearing aid use and auditory training on listening fatigue, using the Fatigue Scale.
To examine the effects of hearing aid use and auditory training on auditory selective attention, using an auditory perceptual load task.
To examine the effects of hearing aid use and auditory training on audiovisual outcome measures and visual tracking protocols.
To examine the effects of hearing aid use and auditory training on functional hearing using a newly developed self-perceived questionnaire that is based on the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) framework.
Other Research Projects
We are also using eye-tracking methods to evaluate patient's acclimatization to frequency lowering iterations.
In our current and future research we will use the Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) method to evaluate acclimatization effects in first-time and experienced hearing aid wearers.
We are also studying associations between hearing aid uptake and the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) Models.
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