Poster #159 - Auditory Chaos is Associated With Reduced Processing Efficiency in Children With Hearing Loss

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Integrative Statement

Children’s early auditory environment is critical for later linguistic skills, cognitive abilities, and academic achievement (Ambrose et al., 2015; Hart & Risley, 1995) However, the auditory environment varies substantially, and chaotic environments may have profound long-term consequences for child development across a number of areas. For example, recent research has shown that 5.5-month-old infants with normal hearing (NH) from chaotic homes exhibited reduced processing speed of complex stimuli (Tomalski et al., 2017). The chaotic auditory environment may be of special concern for children with hearing loss (HL), because perceiving and processing of degraded speech provided by hearing devices itself may require greater efforts, which consumes cognitive resources needed to cope with other adversities (Hicks & Tharpe, 2002). Therefore, we examined the effects of chaotic auditory environments on processing efficiency in children with HL.
Using the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) System, we collected day-long recordings of the home language environment from 5 children who had 12 months of experience with hearing aids (HAs). The total amount of overlapping noise (OLN), electronic media (TVN), and other background noise (NON) in the recording determined auditory chaos. Children’s processing efficiency was then tested using the Looking-while-Listening paradigm (Fernald et al., 2008). For each trial, children were shown 2 familiar images on a television screen- a target and a distractor object- and were instructed to find the target object. Following Weisleder and Fernald (2013), we used proportion of target looking as a measure of processing efficiency.
Both the correlation between OLN in the home and total chaos and proportion of looking time to the target object approached significance (p=.07 and p=.08, respectively), as shown in Figure 1. That is, children in homes with higher instances of noise (such as multiple talkers speaking at the same time) displayed reduced processing efficiency of familiar words.
These findings from children with HL are consistent with results from Tomalski et al. (2017), and suggest that the early auditory environment shapes skills necessary for cognitive development and word learning. Because processing efficiency in the first two years of life has been shown to relate to both lexical and grammatical development in early childhood (Fernald, Perfors & Marchman, 2006), providing an optimal auditory environment may have positive effects on academic achievement, especially for children with HL.
Over the next 4 months, 6 more HA and cochlear implant (CI) users already enrolled in the study will be eligible to participate in this time point. This is a relatively robust sample size for studies involving children with hearing loss (Ching et al., 2009; McGowan, Nittrouer & Chenausky, 2008; Wang, Bergeson, & Houston, 2018), due to the distinct nature of this clinical population.

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Authors

• Rondeline Williams, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Yuanyuan Wang, The Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Dilley, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Derek Houston, The Ohio State University and Nationwide Children's Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author