Scandinavian audiology. Supplementum最新文献

The University of Miami/Dade County Public Schools Model Program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is a research and training effort dedicated to the utilization of sensory aids including hearing aids, tactual vocoders, and cochlear implants. The program's teachers and clinicians follow the Miami Cochlear Implant, Auditory, and Tactile Skills (CHATS) Curriculum for the development of individualized speech perception and production goals. A series of peech perception tests has been used for the past five years to evaluate the children's progress. The test battery, administered at six month intervals, is extensive and impractical for school clinicians and teachers to administer to their students. To assist teachers and clinicians in the process of selecting appropriate goals and objectives for sensory aid training, a speech perception test has been developed to accompany the curriculum. This paper includes a discussion of the test design as it correlates with the curriculum.

Project SICONA endeavours to satisfy the specific needs of the severely hearing impaired. A complex system is introduced, consisting of several speech processing modules to achieve an improvement of the communication ability within the target group. The basic methods are improving the S/N-ratio by multichannel wireless FM transmission, enhancing weak consonants and second formant information and transposing the unvoiced fricative /s/ into the residual hearing area. Single case studies indicate the effectiveness of the proposed methods; improved reception of speech features within the F2 range and successful integration of the replacement /s/ could be shown. Practical useability is achieved by introducing wireless coupling between the miniaturized (SMD technology, ASIC) system components.

The remarkable number of syndromic genetic hearing loss (about 150), the extreme variety of clinical signs that can be associated with the hearing loss, and the different possible combinations make the diagnosis od syndromic genetic hearing loss sometimes very difficult and motivated the development of an expert system (G-DEAFNEX). A collection centre is proposed: to act as a referral centre, for patients with suspected syndromic genetic hearing loss, that aids the diagnostic procedure; to act as a centre for the collection of data on patients with known syndromic genetic hearing loss; to collaborate with Hearing International in a worldwide epidemiological study on syndromic genetic hearing loss; to refine the G-DEAFNEX expert system.

The character of speech of hearing impaired children was evaluated via multidimensional protocol in order to provide sensitive and quantitative measures of assessment. 20 children (9 males and 11 females) with moderate to severe hearing impairment, were studied. The protocol of assessment included auditory perceptual assessment (APA) (documented by high fidelity audiorecording), audiological assessment, formal testings, aerodynamic assessment and acoustic analysis. APA showed addected vowels (90%), affected suprasegmental phonology; rate (60%), stress (80%), tonality (85%); decreased resonance (15%); affected voice (45%) and affected intelligibility (85%). Aerodynamic results showed highly significant increase in the subglottic pressure, highly significant decrease in glottal resistance and glottal efficiency, indicating a possible breakdown in respiratory, phonatory and articulatory coordination. Spectrographic results showed significant increase in the syllable duration; vowel duration and sentence duration. Visi-Pitch results showed highly significant increase in the intensity, significant decrease in the maximum fundamental frequency (Fo) and highly significant decrease in the percent pause. The accoustic findings may represent a quantitative correlate to some of the subjective observations of APA.