Spectral Resolution and Language in Children with Hearing LossILDREN WITH HEARING LOSS

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Even with early identification and intervention, 30-40% of children with hearing loss (HL) do not acquire language and academic skills that meet their developmental potential. Understanding this variability in outcomes may help us predict who is at risk for persistent language delays even after being fit with hearing aids. Current audiologic assessment of children lacks auditory measures that predict outcomes. Identifying an auditory-based task that is predictive of a child’s language skills is of great value to stakeholders to guide expectations and intervention of children with HL. Tasks measuring spectral resolution, such as spectral ripple detection (SRD) tasks, may be predictive of language outcomes. Spectral resolution allows listeners to differentiate variations in the speech spectrum that distinguish speech sounds. SRD tasks may have clinical utility in measuring psychoacoustic skills in children with HL because some children show reduced spectral resolution even after audibility is improved via hearing aids, such that some audible sounds are unintelligible and loud sounds are distorted; however, there is limited research examining the relationship between spectral ripple detection and individual differences in language outcomes in children with normal hearing (CNH) or children with hearing aids (CHA). The current proposal will examine spectral ripple detection as a predictor of language outcomes in school-age CNH and CHA. This proposal seeks to test the central hypothesis that children with poorer SRD will have greater difficulty using the acoustic cues that encode speech, resulting in reduced language abilities. In Aim 1, we will investigate SRD as a predictor of language in CNH. We will assess CNH of a variety of ages on measures of SRD and spoken language (i.e., morphosyntax, vocabulary). We hypothesize a child’s maturing SRD abilities will partially account their improved language abilities as they age. In Aim 2, we will investigate SRD as a predictor of language in CHA. In addition to the tasks in Aim 1, we will consider the impact of hearing loss (i.e., audibility via hearing aids) on these relationships. We hypothesize that audibility and SRD performance will predict language outcomes. Results of the proposed study will elucidate the link between hearing and language in typical development and in children with reduced audibility who use hearing aids. These results will improve tools used to distinguish children who benefit from hearing aids from those who may need changes to their devices (e.g., candidacy for cochlear implantation).