Listening Effort in School-Aged Children With Limited Useable Hearing Unilaterally: Examining the Effects of a Personal, Digital Remote Microphone System and a Contralateral Routing of Signal System.
Ilze Oosthuizen, Erin M Picou, Lidia Pottas and 2 others
PMID 33602042WHAT IT FOUND
A personal remote microphone helped children with one-sided hearing loss understand speech and listen with less effort in most classroom-like conditions.
A CROS system only helped when speech came from the deaf side. It made listening worse when speech came from the hearing side.
Key findings
01The remote microphone system improved speech recognition in all three tested listening conditions, while the CROS system only improved recognition when speech came from the side with hearing loss.
02Children reported less listening effort (faster response times) with the remote microphone in midline and indirect conditions, and with the CROS system only in the indirect condition.
03Participants rated the remote microphone as making listening easier and helping them keep trying more often than the CROS system in midline and indirect conditions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used steady-state noise, which does not reflect the complex, changing noise of real classrooms. The remote microphone was always placed near the talker, which may overestimate its benefit in real classrooms where the teacher moves or multiple people speak. Children were forced to keep their heads still, which may have reduced their ability to use natural strategies to hear better. Most participants were experienced with the remote microphone but not the CROS system, which may have influenced their subjective ratings. The study did not test other common interventions like bone-conduction devices or cochlear implants.
Declared interests
The research was funded by Sonova AG, a company that manufactures hearing aids and remote microphone systems. One author is a member of the Phonak Pediatric Research Advisory Board, and Phonak devices were used in the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the CROS system is a safe alternative to the remote microphone for all listening situations. The study found that the CROS system significantly impaired speech recognition when the teacher spoke from the side of the child's normal hearing, likely because it amplified noise to the good ear.