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Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Children's amplification needs--same or different from adults?
1National Acoustic Laboratories, Chatswood, NSW, Australia. Teresa.Ching@nal.gov.au
Insights
Children with hearing loss may need more amplification for soft sounds compared to adults. However, their needs for loud and medium sounds, and frequency response, are similar to adults when fitting hearing aids.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Pediatric audiology
- Hearing aid technology
Background:
- Hearing aid fitting strategies for children have historically differed from adult protocols.
- There's limited research on whether children's amplification needs vary from adults, beyond ear canal size differences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review current hearing aid fitting strategies for children.
- To investigate if children require different gain levels for high-, medium-, and low-level sounds compared to adults with similar hearing loss.
- To examine if children prefer a different frequency response than adults.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing research on pediatric and adult hearing aid fitting.
- Comparison of gain requirements and frequency response preferences between children and adults across different sound intensity levels.
Main Results:
- Children's required gain for high-level sounds is similar to adults due to comparable loudness discomfort levels.
- Preferred gain for medium-level sounds in children is comparable to, or slightly greater than, adults.
- Children might benefit from increased gain for low-level sounds to achieve similar speech understanding as adults, though this has potential drawbacks.
Conclusions:
- Children's hearing aid fitting may require adjustments for low-level sound amplification.
- Frequency response preferences for hearing aids are consistent between children and adults.
- Further research into novel methods for evaluating individual pediatric hearing aid fittings is warranted.
Abstract:
Hearing aid fitting strategies for children have largely developed separately from those for adults. There has, however, been little consideration of whether children's amplification requirements are different, except for the physical effects of differences in ear canal size. This paper summarizes the fitting strategies for children, and examines whether children require more (or less) gain for high-, medium- or low-level sounds, or a different frequency response, compared with adults with similar hearing loss. Research relating to the above questions is reviewed. The gain that children require for high-level sounds is not different than for adults because loudness discomfort levels are similar. The gain children prefer for medium-level sounds is the same, or only slightly more, than is preferred by adults. Children may require greater gain for low-level sounds because they do require higher signal levels to achieve the same level of speech understanding as adults do. There are, however, arguments why more gain for low-level sounds may not be desirable. The frequency response children prefer is the same as that preferred by adults. New methods for evaluating individual fittings are briefly discussed.
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