children

Watching ‘Star Wars’ With Common Sense

To determine a noise rating, we could analyze the frequency of explosions—say, how many blasts per minute, on average—and the overall sound level of a film.

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Why Children With Autism May Experience Auditory Sensory Overload

The successful navigation of complex everyday environments with multiple sensory inputs—such as restaurants, busy streets, and other social settings—relies on the brain’s ability to organize the barrage of information into discrete perceptual objects on which cognitive processes, such as selective attention, can act.

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Measuring Children’s Ability to Hear Speech in Different Competing Backgrounds

Young children spend much of their day listening in noise. However, it is clear that, compared with adults, infants and children are highly susceptible to interference from competing background sounds.

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A Lesson in Resilience

One of my earliest memories is answering the telephone for my mother. She taught me to do this when I was only 2 1/2 years old. I’d say to the caller, “Take a message for Mommy?” Then I repeated what the caller said, my mother responded, and we handed the phone back and forth as the conversation went along.

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Effects of Premature Birth on the Auditory System

In our August 2020 paper in The Hearing Journal, we review causes of prematurity and the typical development of the auditory system. The sensory system, which includes the auditory system, develops in a very specific way inside the womb. This process is interrupted and occurs differently when development continues outside of the womb due to a premature birth.

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What Auditory Processing Disorders Are Really All About

I expand on the information presented, clarify issues, and ensure that readers obtain an appropriate understanding of what auditory processing disorders are really all about, how they are appropriately evaluated, and how specific treatments are identified for the different types of auditory processing disorders (APD) that may be found in a child.

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Making Sound More Visual for Students With Hearing Loss in Your Virtual Classroom

Due to COVID-19, most classrooms will look different this fall. Some will exist in person with social distancing measures in place, while others will be entirely virtual. Many will be a hybrid of both face-to-face and online instruction. As always, there will still be students ready to learn and caring teachers eager to take on the curriculum.

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Distance Learning With a Hearing Loss

In the classroom, Alex has a captionist who ensures that he gets most of what the teacher is saying. He also carries a small microphone, or mini mic, for teachers to talk into so that their speech streams directly into his hearing aid and CI. Together, these two tactics were by no means perfect, but they worked for Alex. Unfortunately, like every other student across the world, Alex’s in-person education routine was interrupted a few months ago.

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A Request for Supplemental Funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

Beyond funding groundbreaking hearing loss research, Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) also promotes hearing health through a variety of channels, including outreach to legislators. In June 2020, HHF and eight other member organizations of the Friends of the Congressional Hearing Health Caucus authored a letter to Congress to urge supplemental funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

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18 Years Later

Our twins, James and Riley, were born on August 23. They did not pass this initial hearing screen, so auditory brainstem response (ABR) tests were administered in the hospital. Two weeks after a second ABR with our audiologist, they were both diagnosed with moderate bilateral sensorineural hearing loss.

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