Biomedical subjects

Christina M Roup

Publications and source records attributed to Christina M Roup.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Dichotic word recognition in young and older adults.

Dichotic word recognition was evaluated in free-recall, directed-attention right, and directed-attention left response conditions. All participants were right-handed and included a group of young adults with normal hearing and two groups of older adults with sensorineural hearing loss. Dichotic word recognition performance was best for young adults and decreased for each older group. A right-ear advantage (REA) was observed for all groups. REAs observed in the older groups were larger than those for the young adults, resulting from a greater deficit in dichotic word recognition performance for words presented to the left ear. A subset of older adults exhibited few to no responses (< or = 3/100) for the left ear for all response conditions, which may relate to a compromise in auditory processing. The results support an age-related disadvantage in recognition performance for dichotic stimuli presented to the left ear not entirely accounted for by differences in hearing sensitivity between subject groups.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Acclimatization in wide dynamic range multichannel compression and linear amplification hearing aids.

Acclimatization was studied in hearing-impaired patients with no previous hearing aid (HA) experience who were fit bilaterally with either wide dynamic range multichannel compression (WDRMCC) or linear amplification (LA) HAs. Throughout 40 weeks of normal HA use, we monitored changes in nonsense syllable perception in speech-spectrum noise. Syllable recognition for WDRMCC users improved by 4.6% over the first 8 weeks, but the 2.2% improvement for LA users was complete in 2 to 4 weeks. Consonant confusion analyses indicated that WDRMCC experience facilitated consonant identification, while LA users primarily changed their response biases. Furthermore, WDRMCC users showed greater improvement for aided than unaided stimuli, while LA users did not. These results demonstrate acclimatization in new users of WDRMCC HAs but not in new users of LA HAs. A switch in amplification type after 32 weeks produced minimal performance change. Thus, acclimatization depended on the type of amplification and the previous amplification experience.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Perceptual training improves syllable identification in new and experienced hearing aid users.

We assessed the effects of perceptual training of syllable identification in noise on nonsense syllable test (NST) performance of new (Experiment 1) and experienced (Experiment 2) hearing aid (HA) users with sensorineural hearing loss. In Experiment 1, new HA users were randomly assigned to either immediate training (IT) or delayed training (DT) groups. IT subjects underwent 8 weeks of at-home syllable identification training and in-laboratory testing, whereas DT subjects underwent identical in-laboratory testing without training. Training produced large improvements in syllable identification in IT subjects, whereas spontaneous improvement was minimal in DT subjects. DT subjects then underwent training and showed performance improvements comparable with those of the IT group. Training-related improvement in NST scores significantly exceeded improvements due to amplification. In Experiment 2, experienced HA users received identical training and testing procedures as users in Experiment 1. The experienced users also showed significant training benefit. Training-related improvements generalized to untrained voices and were maintained on retention tests. Perceptual training appears to be a promising tool for improving speech perception in new and experienced HA users.

Aged↗