CENTER FOR PERCEPTION AND COMMUNICATION IN CHILDREN

描述(由申请人提供)：儿童感知与交流中心(CPCC)是内布拉斯加州奥马哈市男童镇国立研究医院(BTNRH)的一个中心，其目标是通过为有兴趣了解儿童听力损失对言语和语言感知和处理的影响的初级教员提供一个独特的环境来扩大当前研究计划的范围，并最终描述听力损失儿童在现实世界中的表现。我们的目标是扩大研究计划，以其目前对听觉系统外周功能的重视为基础，包括在更复杂的问题上的最新工作，例如听力损失对包括教室在内的真实世界环境中表现的影响，自下而上和自上而下处理对将英语作为第二语言学习的儿童的贡献，视觉和听觉信息在言语和语言习得中的整合，助听器特性的调整，以促进时间处理的发展，以及与听力损失相关的前庭缺陷视觉处理的后果。行政核心将协调与外部咨询委员会和外部导师的互动，技术核心将为硬件和软件开发、信号处理和房间声学问题提供支助，临床测量核心将收集临床数据，执行质量保证程序，并协助选择和解释临床措施。CPCC将受益于高级教员的综合研究经验，他们将担任核心董事和导师，并受益于BTNRH独特的患者资源和翻译研究环境。未来的计划要求继续扩大研究计划，将听力正常儿童的言语/语言和认知功能的工作包括在内，利用目前正在开发的神经成像设施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the Center for Perception and Communication in Children (CPCC), a COBRE at the Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH) in Omaha, Nebraska, is to expand the range of the current research program by providing a unique environment for the development of junior faculty who have an interest in understanding the consequences of childhood hearing loss for speech and language perception and processing, and ultimately describing performance of children with hearing loss in the real world. Our goal is to broaden the research program, building on its current emphasis on peripheral function in the auditory system to include state-of-the-art work on more complex issues such as the impact of hearing loss on performance in real-world environments including classrooms, the contributions of bottom-up and top down processing in children learning English as a second language, integration of visual and auditory information in speech and language acquisition, the adjustment of hearing-aid properties to promote development of temporal processing and the consequences for visual processing of vestibular deficits associated with hearing loss. Research on these topics will be facilitated by an Administration Core that will coordinate interaction with an External Advisory Committee and external mentors, a Technical Core that will provide support for hardware and software development, signal processing and room-acoustics issues and a Clinical Measurement Core that will collect clinical data, implement quality assurance procedures and assist with selection and interpretation of clinical measures. The CPCC will benefit from combined research experience of the senior faculty who will serve as core directors and mentors and from the unique patient resources and translational research environment at BTNRH. Future plans call for continued expansion of the research program to include work on speech/ language and cognitive function in children with normal hearing, taking advantage of neural imaging facilities currently under development.