Children’s Ability to Manage Amplification

The goal of this study is to determine the age at which children can successfully manage their hearing aids in noisy environments. Currently, we don’t know how old a child needs to be to recognize the benefit of certain hearing aid features that may help them to hear better in noise.  Children in this study will be fitted with hearing aids that have different features for listening in noise. The children then use a remote control for the hearing aids to choose the feature that they think works best for them and then repeat sentences presented in different noisy situations. We will use the results to determine if they were indeed able to understand the speech with the feature they chose. The results of this study will indicate the youngest age at which children can use hearing aids with multiple options. This information will help audiologists know when to introduce certain hearing aid features to their pediatric patients.

Who Can Participate? Children with hearing loss between the ages of 7 and 12 years of age who currently use hearing aids. Children should be able to converse well in English and have normal or corrected vision for working with a computer.

What’s Involved? This study requires one visit to the Pediatric Amplification lab lasting no more than 2 hours. As part of the study each children will receive a standard hearing evaluation and a standard vocabulary test. These tests are provided at no charge and participants are welcome to request a copy of the results of the standard tests.

What will they receive? Each child is paid $15/hour ($30 total) for the study.

How to to enroll: If you have any questions about our study or if you would like to enroll your child, call Mollie Hiipakka at (480) 727-0508 or Andrea Pittman at (480) 727-8728. You may also send an email to mollie.hiipakka@asu.edu or andrea.pittman@asu.edu. Appointments are available throughout the week and siblings may be scheduled together. Appointments are also available on Saturdays but are reserved for children with hearing loss only.

How Well Do Adults and Children Learn New Words with Hearing Aids?

This study examines children’s and adult’s ability to learn new words using the kind of signal processing that comes in hearing aids. Participants in this study are asked to learn three sets of new words (these are nonsense words that we made up) using an interactive computer game. The game promotes learning through a process of trial and error. A different type of signal processing will be used to each of the three sets of words. The goal of this study is to determine the type of signal processing that allows for the fasted learning.  That information will help us design hearing aids with sufficient sound quality for adults and children with hearing loss.

Who Can Participate? Adults between the ages of 40 and 65 years and children between the ages of 7 and 12 years.  Participants can have normal hearing or hearing loss that can be corrected with hearing aids.  Participants should be able to converse well in English and have normal or corrected vision for working with a computer.

What’s Involved? This study requires one visit to the Pediatric Amplification lab on the ASU campus.  The visit will last no more than 2 hours. As part of the study each participant will receive a standard hearing evaluation. Children will also receive a standard vocabulary test. These tests are provided at no charge and participants are welcome to request a copy of the results of the standard tests.

What will they receive? Each participant is paid $15/hour ($30 total) for the study.

How to enroll: If you have any questions about our study or if you would like to enroll yourself or your child, call Rachel Henrickson at (480) 727-0508 or Andrea Pittman at (480) 727-8728. You may also send an email to rachel.henrickson@asu.edu or andrea.pittman@asu.edu. Appointments are available throughout the week and siblings/spouses who qualify may be scheduled together.  Appointments are also available on Saturdays but are reserved for children with hearing loss only.