Preparatory auditory attention in hearing-impaired children: Version 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Preparatory attention during multi-talker listening in hearing-impaired children.
IRAS ID
124008
Contact name
Emma Holmes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of York
Research summary
People with impaired hearing often experience difficulty in understanding what someone is saying when other people are speaking at the same time. Since many classroom situations involve listening to a teacher while other people in the room are talking, children with impaired hearing face a challenge at school. In the worst case, their difficulties may undermine educational attainment. Physiological abnormalities arising in the ear have been relatively well documented in children with impaired hearing, but may not fully explain their difficulties. This project aims to establish whether children with impaired hearing also have difficulties in controlling attention; specifically, do they display atypical brain activity when preparing to listen to a particular talker in a mixture of talkers, and then when they try to report what that talker is saying? The results will increase our understanding of the bases of children’s difficulties and, in the longer term, could help target interventions more effectively. The project is funded by the Goodricke Appeal Fund, a charity based at York Hospital for hearing-impaired children in the North Yorkshire. We shall recruit children with moderate to severe hearing loss. Children will visit the Spatial Hearing Laboratory at the University of York for 3 hours. They will take a conventional hearing test and will complete questionnaires. Then they will listen to recorded voices played through loudspeakers, while wearing a cap of surface electrodes that will measure their brain activity while they attempt to attend to one talker while other talkers are speaking at the same time. We shall identify abnormal patterns of brain activity by comparing data from children with impaired hearing with data that we have collected already from children of the same age with normal hearing.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NE/0120
Date of REC Opinion
10 Jun 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion