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.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
116
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.
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.
Boys Town National Research Hospital
Omaha, Nebraska, United States
Auditory Object Size (Apparent Source Width)
Psychoacoustic measure of the smallest detectable change in width of an auditory image in degree angular span in the horizontal plane
Time frame: Year 1-3
Spatial Acuity (Minimum audible angle)
Psychoacoustic measure of the smallest detectable angular separation between two auditory objects
Time frame: Year 1-3
Spatial Unmasking (Minimum angular separation)
Psychoacoustic measure of the smallest angular separation to gain a target speech benefit in the presence of distracting speech maskers
Time frame: Year 1-3
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