EAR-DNA · childrEn and Adults heaRing in noise: individual Differences in the Neurophysiology of Audition

childrEn and Adults heaRing in noise: individual Differences in the Neurophysiology of Audition

This project was initially designed to improve speech perception in noise in both adult and children listeners with hearing loss. However, due to the pandemic, I have had to reframe this objective, due to the impossibility to recruit and test listeners for almost half the duration of the project. I will present here the final version of the project, as we have had to adapt it to face the pandemic. In everyday auditory environments, listeners face the challenging task to perceive speech amidst noisy backgrounds. From a psychoacoustical point of view, speech consists of slow amplitude modulations imposed on rapid oscillations of a carrier waveform. Listeners have to process the amplitude fluctuations of target sounds amongst interfering, amplitude-modulated (AM) sounds. For most listeners, the detection of an AM target sound is hindered by the presence of an interfering AM tone in a remote frequency region, a phenomenon known as modulation detection interference (MDI; Sheft & Yost, 1989). Importantly, MDI increases with the proximity in AM rates between target and masker AMs, leading to an interference of up to 15 dB SPL, with a large inter-individual variability. So far, the neural correlates of MDI have remained unknown. Therefore, the first working package (WP1) of this project was dedicated to the investigation of the neural correlates of modulation detection interference in young, normally-hearing adults. Special interest was paid to their potential relationship to the behavioral performance. In normally hearing children, the peripheral auditory system is functionally mature by 6 months of age (Werner, 2011). Yet children and adolescents remain more susceptible to noise than adults until around 16 years of age. With noise levels largely exceeding the recommendations of the World Health Organisation, classrooms fall short of providing quiet learning environments. Critically, background noise limits cognitive resources, and may jeopardize academic performance. Therefore, a second working package (WP2) of this project was to evaluate the maturation of speech processing in noise and the mechanisms that contribute to its development in children with normal hearing. Studies specifically investigating stream segregation and selective attention in children suggest that both abilities contribute to speech perception in noise, but remain immature until at least 12 years of age. A second study, conducted online, aimed to investigate the development of selective attention and its contribution to speech perception in noise from childhood to late adolescence.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз