An 'off-the-shelf' assistive listening device: Normal-hearing children
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Testing speech intelligibility outcomes with a commercial bone-conduction headset in children with normal hearing
IRAS ID
251222
Contact name
Tamsin Brown
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridgeshire Community Services (CCS) NHS Trust R&D department
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 30 days
Research summary
Our cochlea, the sensory organ of hearing, is a structure of the temporal bone on the skull. In everyday life we hear most sounds via air conduction. This means that vibrations in the air are conducted through our ear canals, via our eardrum and middle-ear bones, to the cochlea in the inner ear. However, vibrations can be conducted to the cochlea via the bones of the head. Bone-conduction headsets have become popular for recreational use (for example cyclists and runners wear them to listen to music while exercising). When in a noisy environment, if a speech signal is delivered to a microphone connected via Bluetooth to the bone conduction headset, the person wearing the headset receives the speech signal as if the talker were closer to them. The ratio between the speech level and the noise level (SNR, signal-to-noise ratio) is increased,so that it is easier to understand the spoken message. We have shown that this may help children with 'glue ear'. Now we want to explore the potential of the headset to help children with auditory processing disorder (APD). Typically, children with APD have normal audiograms, but, in spite of this, they struggle to understand speech in a background noise. The headset can deliver the speech message to them. Currently, FM systems are used for children with APD in the classroom. These systems are effective, but their cost is high and provision may be limited. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of the use of the headset in a group of children with normal audiometric thresholds. Measures of speech recognition and listening effort will be done in quiet and in noise with and without the bone-conduction headset in order to measure the effect of using the headset on speech recognition when hearing thresholds are normal.
REC name
South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/SC/0106
Date of REC Opinion
21 Feb 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion