Improving Perception of Speech in Noise in Children With Communication Disorders

Improving Perception of Speech in Noise in Children With Communication Disorders

Smarty Ears has developed a prototype of an innovative therapeutic training system to improve speech perception in noise by training children on interrupted noise (which has silent intervals that allow for fragments of the target to be heard). The study will attempt to validate the technology and gather initial design feedback from clinicians and caregivers and from children with ASD and HL.

Recent evidence indicates that listening in interrupted noise can provide perceptual benefits, such as remapping the auditory environment and learning to use acoustic cues. The developed technology, uses adaptive listening training that automatically increases noise level difficulty as performance improves, and includes age appropriate rewards to maintain interest. The mobile app includes an initial and final screening, a training system that administers training via the child's own mobile device, and detailed performance dashboard. The study will attempt to validate the technology by gathering feedback from clinicians and caregivers and from children with ASD and HL.

Inclusion Criteria:

• For all children: normal or corrected to normal vision.
• For children with typical development normal or corrected to normal vision + normal hearing.
• For children with HL Children must have at least one year experience with amplification (i.e Hearing aids) and no threshold> 70 dB.

Exclusion Criteria:

• To participate, all children must be able to comply with directions and engage in tasks that require some expressive language response on the language and cognitive measures (i.e. children who are considered to be in the "word combinations" or "sentences expressive language" phase; Tager-Flusberg et al., 2009).