Listening Effort in School-Age Children With Normal Hearing Compared to Children With Limited Useable Hearing Unilaterally

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Ilze Oosthuizen ◽  
Erin M. Picou ◽  
Lidia Pottas ◽  
Hermanus Carel Myburgh ◽  
De Wet Swanepoel
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Verbal Response ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Listening Effort ◽  
Classroom Accommodations ◽  
Hearing Children

Objectives Children with limited hearing unilaterally might experience more listening effort than children with normal hearing, yet previous studies have not confirmed this. This study compared listening effort in school-age children with normal hearing and children with limited hearing unilaterally using behavioral and subjective listening effort measures. Design Two groups of school-age children (aged 7–12 years) participated: 19 with limited hearing unilaterally and 18 with normal hearing bilaterally. Participants completed digit triplet recognition tasks in quiet and in noise (−12 dB SNR) in three loudspeaker conditions: midline, direct, and indirect. Verbal response times during the recognition task were interpreted as behavioral listening effort. Subjective ratings of “task difficulty” and “hard to think” were interpreted as subjective listening effort. Participant age was included as a covariate in analysis of behavioral data. Results Noise negatively affected digit triplet recognition for both groups in the midline loudspeaker condition and for participants with limited hearing unilaterally in the direct and indirect conditions. Relative to their peers with normal hearing, children with limited hearing unilaterally exhibited significantly longer response times and higher ratings of effort only in the noisy, indirect condition. Differences between groups were evident even when age differences were controlled for statistically. Conclusions Using behavioral and subjective indices of listening effort, children with limited unilateral hearing demonstrated significantly more listening effort relative to their peers with normal hearing during the difficult indirect listening condition. Implications include classroom accommodations to limit indirect listening situations for children with limited useable hearing unilaterally and consideration of intervention options.

scholarly journals Listening Effort in School-Aged Children With Limited Useable Hearing Unilaterally: Examining the Effects of a Personal, Digital Remote Microphone System and a Contralateral Routing of Signal System

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 233121652098470
Author(s):  
Ilze Oosthuizen ◽  
Erin M. Picou ◽  
Lidia Pottas ◽  
Hermanus C. Myburgh ◽  
De Wet Swanepoel
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Verbal Response ◽  
Behavioral Measure ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Listening Effort ◽  
Behavioral Measures ◽  
School Aged Children

Technology options for children with limited hearing unilaterally that improve the signal-to-noise ratio are expected to improve speech recognition and also reduce listening effort in challenging listening situations, although previous studies have not confirmed this. Employing behavioral and subjective indices of listening effort, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of two intervention options, remote microphone system (RMS) and contralateral routing of signal (CROS) system, in school-aged children with limited hearing unilaterally. Nineteen children (aged 7–12 years) with limited hearing unilaterally completed a digit triplet recognition task in three loudspeaker conditions: midline, monaural direct, and monaural indirect with three intervention options: unaided, RMS, and CROS system. Verbal response times were interpreted as a behavioral measure of listening effort. Participants provided subjective ratings immediately following behavioral measures. The RMS significantly improved digit triplet recognition across loudspeaker conditions and reduced verbal response times in the midline and indirect conditions. The CROS system improved speech recognition and listening effort only in the indirect condition. Subjective ratings analyses revealed that significantly more participants indicated that the remote microphone made it easier for them to listen and to stay motivated. Behavioral and subjective indices of listening effort indicated that an RMS provided the most consistent benefit for speech recognition and listening effort for children with limited unilateral hearing. RMSs could therefore be a beneficial technology option in classrooms for children with limited hearing unilaterally.

Listening Effort and Fatigue in School-Age Children With and Without Hearing Loss

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candace Bourland Hicks ◽  
Anne Marie Tharpe
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Future Research ◽  
School Age ◽  
Listening Effort ◽  
Hearing Results ◽  
Dual Task Paradigm ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss ◽  
Acoustic Conditions

Parents, audiologists, and educators have long speculated that children with hearing loss must expend more effort and, therefore, fatigue more easily than their peers with normal hearing when listening in adverse acoustic conditions. Until now, however, very few studies have been conducted to substantiate these speculations. Two experiments were conducted with school-age children with mild-to-moderate hearing loss and with normal hearing. In the first experiment, salivary cortisol levels and a self-rating measure were used to measure fatigue. Neither cortisol measurements nor self-rated measures of fatigue revealed significant differences between children with hearing loss and their normalhearing peers. In the second experiment, however, a dual-task paradigm used to study listening effort indicated that children with hearing loss expend more effort in listening than children with normal hearing. Results are discussed in terms of clinical application and future research needs.

scholarly journals Gap Detection in School-Age Children and Adults: Effects of Inherent Envelope Modulation and the Availability of Cues Across Frequency

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 1098-1107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Buss ◽  
Joseph W. Hall ◽  
Heather Porter ◽  
John H. Grose
Keyword(s):  
Narrow Band ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Gap Detection ◽  
School Age ◽  
Band Noise ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
Fluctuation Noise ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Envelope Modulation

Purpose The present study evaluated the effects of inherent envelope modulation and the availability of cues across frequency on behavioral gap detection with noise-band stimuli in school-age children. Method Listeners were 34 normal-hearing children (ages 5.2–15.6 years) and 12 normal-hearing adults (ages 18.5–28.8 years). Stimuli were continuous bands of noise centered on 2000 Hz, either 1000- or 25-Hz wide. In addition to Gaussian noise at these bandwidths, there were conditions using 25-Hz-wide noise bands modified to either accentuate or minimize inherent envelope modulation (staccato and low-fluctuation noise, respectively). Results Within the 25-Hz-wide conditions, adults' gap detection thresholds were highest in the staccato, lower in the Gaussian, and lowest in the low-fluctuation noise. Similar trends were evident in children's thresholds, although inherent envelope modulation had a smaller effect on children than on adults. Whereas adults' thresholds were comparable for the 1000-Hz-wide Gaussian and 25-Hz-wide low-fluctuation stimulus, children's performance converged on adults' performance at a younger age for the 1000-Hz-wide Gaussian stimulus. Conclusions Results are consistent with the idea that children are less susceptible to the disruptive effects of inherent envelope modulation than adults when detecting a gap in a narrow-band noise. Further, the ability to use spectrally distributed gap detection cues appears to mature relatively early in childhood.

The LOT Test and School-Age Children

1976 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles R. Behnke ◽  
James E. Lankford
Keyword(s):  
Positive Result ◽  
False Positive ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
False Positive Result ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
New Criterion

The LOT test was administered to 100 normal-hearing subjects ranging in age from seven years, six months to 10 years, six months. The test was conducted at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz with 99 subjects who were able to perform the required task. The LOT test misclassified (false-positive result) only 4% of the normal-hearing children at 1000 Hz. The test misclassified 3% at 2000 Hz, 3% at 4000 Hz, and 14% at 500 Hz. A new criterion for the use of the LOT test with children is proposed which reduces the percentage of misclassification to 2% at 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. The frequency of 500 Hz is not recommended for the preadolescent population.

scholarly journals Talker Discrimination by Prelingually Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants: Preliminary Results

2002 ◽  
Vol 111 (5_suppl) ◽  
pp. 113-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda Cleary ◽  
David B. Pisoni
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Sentence Condition ◽  
Language Outcome ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Proportion Correct ◽  
Linguistic Content

Forty-four school-age children who had used a multichannel cochlear implant (CI) for at least 4 years were tested to assess their ability to discriminate differences between recorded pairs of female voices uttering sentences. Children were asked to respond “same voice” or “different voice” on each trial. Two conditions were examined. In one condition, the linguistic content of the sentence was always held constant and only the talker's voice varied from trial to trial. In another condition, the linguistic content of the utterance also varied so that to correctly respond “same voice,” the child needed to recognize that Two different sentences were spoken by the same talker. Data from normal-hearing children were used to establish that these tasks were well within the capabilities of children without hearing impairment. For the children with CIs, in the “fixed sentence condition” the mean proportion correct was 68%, which, although significantly different from the 50% score expected by chance, suggests that the children with CIs found this discrimination task rather difficult. In the “varied sentence condition,” however, the mean proportion correct was only 57%, indicating that the children were essentially unable to recognize an unfamiliar talker's voice when the linguistic content of the paired sentences differed. Correlations with other speech and language outcome measures are also reported.

Behavioral Measures of Listening Effort in School-Age Children

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronan McGarrigle ◽  
Samantha J. Gustafson ◽  
Benjamin W. Y. Hornsby ◽  
Fred H. Bess
Keyword(s):  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Listening Effort ◽  
Behavioral Measures

scholarly journals Speechreading Development in Deaf and Hearing Children: Introducing the Test of Child Speechreading

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 416-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona E. Kyle ◽  
Ruth Campbell ◽  
Tara Mohammed ◽  
Mike Coleman ◽  
Mairéad MacSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Hearing Status ◽  
Reliable Assessment ◽  
New Instrument ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Hearing Children

Purpose In this article, the authors describe the development of a new instrument, the Test of Child Speechreading (ToCS), which was specifically designed for use with deaf and hearing children. Speechreading is a skill that is required for deaf children to access the language of the hearing community. ToCS is a deaf-friendly, computer-based test that measures child speechreading (silent lipreading) at 3 psycholinguistic levels: (a) Words, (b) Sentences, and (c) Short Stories. The aims of the study were to standardize the ToCS with deaf and hearing children and to investigate the effects of hearing status, age, and linguistic complexity on speechreading ability. Method Eighty-six severely and profoundly deaf children and 91 hearing children participated. All children were between the ages of 5 and 14 years. The deaf children were from a range of language and communication backgrounds, and their preferred mode of communication varied. Results Speechreading skills significantly improved with age for both groups of children. There was no effect of hearing status on speechreading ability, and children from both groups showed similar performance across all subtests of the ToCS. Conclusion The ToCS is a valid and reliable assessment of speechreading ability in school-age children that can be used to measure individual differences in performance in speechreading ability.

Modulation masking and masked speech perception in normal-hearing school-age children and adults

2016 ◽  
Vol 139 (4) ◽  
pp. 2189-2189
Author(s):  
Emily Buss ◽  
John H. Grose ◽  
Joseph W. Hall ◽  
Christian Lorenzi
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age
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