Spatial Hearing Development
Conditions
Brief summary
The goal of the clinical trial study (Phase 0) is to map out the developmental trajectory of functional spatial hearing abilities in reverberant environments for children with normal hearing between the ages of 6 and 18 years, and to understand the inter-relationships between the three perceptual abilities: auditory object size formation, spatial acuity, and spatial unmasking during typical development. Children are asked to perform psychoacoustic tasks when the auditory stimuli are processed to present in virtual acoustic environments (1) with no reverberation and (2) with one of the two levels of reverberation that emulate everyday indoor environments. The intervention of this clinical study is in the random assignment of one of the two reverberant environments. Researchers will compare these children with a group of normal-hearing adults to anchor matured performances.
Interventions
OTHERLow-Reverberation
The exposure to low-reverberation is by presenting auditory stimuli to participants that are digitally processed to contain auditory cues that sound more or less reverberant, e.g., small classroom.
OTHERHigh-Reverberation
The exposure to high-reverberation is by presenting auditory stimuli to participants that are digitally processed to contain auditory cues that sound more or less reverberant, e.g., large lecture hall/auditorium.
Sponsors
Father Flanagan's Boys' Home
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Intervention model description
There are two arms in the exposure of reverberation for participants. For children (n1=45) and adults (n1=15) assigned to Arm 1, they receive a non-reverberant environment (control) and a low-reverberant environment (intervention A). For children (n2 = 45) and adults (n2 = 15) assigned to Arm 2, they receive the same non-reverberant environment (control) and a high-reverberant environment (intervention B). Both arms of children and adults enrolled perform the same psychoacoustic tasks for outcome assessments.
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
6 Years to 30 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* All individuals within age limits who are typically developing with normal hearing who pass 25 dB HL from 250 Hz to 8000 Hz.
Exclusion criteria
* Individuals who fail hearing screen as described above. * Individuals who have a diagnosed intellectual developmental disability
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Auditory Object Size (Apparent Source Width) | Year 1-3 | Psychoacoustic measure of the smallest detectable change in width of an auditory image in degree angular span in the horizontal plane |
| Spatial Acuity (Minimum audible angle) | Year 1-3 | Psychoacoustic measure of the smallest detectable angular separation between two auditory objects |
| Spatial Unmasking (Minimum angular separation) | Year 1-3 | Psychoacoustic measure of the smallest angular separation to gain a target speech benefit in the presence of distracting speech maskers |
Countries
United States
Contacts
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATORZ. Ellen Peng
Father Flanagan's Boys' Home
Outcome results
None listed