Children Prefer Our Noise Management Technologies

Children Prefer Our Noise Management Technologies

Research has clearly shown that children who have hearing loss frequently experience communication difficulties in noisy situations.

Quite possibly the most compelling finding is the fact that an overwhelming majority of children expressed a strong preference for the combined use of adaptive directional microphone technology — the Phonak proprietary gain-frequency response for noisy conditions and automatic noise reduction.

Research on Noise Management

The latest Field Study News evaluates different types of noise management technologies. This study describes 14 school-age children’s performance with and preference for a variety of different types of noise management technologies.

Use of the adaptive directional microphone mode resulted in a significant improvement in sentence recognition when speech arrived from the front (mean improvement of 24 percent relative to the omnidirectional condition).

Children also expressed a strong preference for the collective use of each of the noise management technologies — both when speech arrived from the front and when speech arrived from behind.

Study Addresses 3 Questions

1. What is the individual contribution of various noise management technologies (e.g., alteration of the gain-frequency response, automatic noise reduction, microphone mode) on speech recognition abilities of children with hearing loss?
2. What is the impact of various microphone modes on the localization abilities of children with hearing loss?
3. What noise management technologies do children with hearing loss prefer to use in classroom environments?

Read this Field Study News to review other studies about children’s performance in noise as well as the study’s purpose, methodology, results and conclusions