Biomedical subjects

Emily Tobey

Publications and source records attributed to Emily Tobey.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Central auditory maturation and babbling development in infants with cochlear implants.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between the maturation of central auditory pathways and the development of canonical (speechlike) babbling in infants with cochlear implants. DESIGN: Comparison of the latencies of the P1 cortical auditory evoked potential and vocalizations produced by subjects before they were fitted with a cochlear implant and at several time points within the first year after implantation. SUBJECTS: Two congenitally deaf children who were implanted with a multichannel cochlear implant at ages 13 and 14 months. INTERVENTIONS: P1 response latencies were recorded in response to a /ba/ stimulus before implantation and at several time points following implantation. Vocalizations produced by the subjects while interacting with their caregiver were audiorecorded twice before implantation and at monthly sessions following implantation. RESULTS: Subjects showed a rapid decrease in P1 latencies resulting in normal P1 latencies within about 3 months after implantation. Before implantation, the vocalizations were primarily of a precanonical nature. After 3 months' experience with the implants, the proportion of canonical vocalizations increased dramatically relative to the number of precanonical utterances. CONCLUSIONS: Results of this study suggest that the development of P1 response latencies and the development of early communicative behaviors may follow a similar developmental trajectory in children implanted early. Although preliminary, these findings indicate that the development of early communicative behaviors following implantation may be positively influenced by the rate of plastic changes in central auditory pathways.

Auditory Pathways↗

PubMed2003

Hearing aid users benefit from induction loop when using digital cellular phones.

OBJECTIVE: Hearing aid users have recently been reported to experience problems with electromagnetic interference when using digital cellular phones. This study was undertaken to investigate the possible benefit of an induction loop system developed for use with some cellular phone models, and also to compare the possible benefit in two languages (Finnish and American English) as well as the benefit with two hearing aid technologies (analog versus digital). DESIGN: The study was performed in controlled laboratory conditions at two tertiary care hearing health care centers, one in Oulu, Finland and the other in Dallas, in the United States. The subjects were experienced users of behind-the-ear hearing aids and served as their own controls in three different listening conditions. Thirty-two eligible subjects (20 in Oulu and 12 in Dallas) participated in three test conditions: 1. call with a landline phone, 2. call with a digital cellular phone alone and 3. call with a digital cellular phone coupled to an induction loop. RESULTS: Sentence recognition scores and subjective judgments using a visual analog scale revealed the poorest results with the digital cellular phone alone. When the induction loop was used with the digital cellular phones, sentence recognition scores and the visual analog scale scores were comparable to the scores obtained with a landline phone. The mean sentence recognition score for analog hearing aids was 62.4% (95% confidence interval 50.2 to 74.6) with the landline phone, 12.6% (-1.6 to 26.9) with the digital cellular phone alone, and 63.3% (44.2 to 82.3) when using the digital cellular phone with the induction loop. For digital hearing aids, the sentence recognition scores were 62.4% (51.9 to 72.9), 37.4% (18.0 to 56.8) and 57.6% (39.0 to 76.2), respectively. There was no significant difference in performance between the two centers. However, when using the digital cellular phone alone, there was no drop in the sentence recognition scores with the few (N = 5) digital hearing aids in Dallas. The subjects ranked the digital cellular phone alone as the poorest test condition and the digital cellular phone with an induction loop as the best. CONCLUSIONS: Induction loops appear to offer one possible solution for the incompatibility problem between hearing aids and digital cellular phones. However, the generalizability of the results must be viewed cautiously, because testing included only one induction loop and two digital cellular phone models.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Rehabilitation factors contributing to implant benefit in children.

This study was performed to investigate factors contributing to auditory, speech, language, and reading outcomes after 4 to 6 years of multichannel cochlear implant use in children with prelingual deafness. The analysis controlled for the effects of child, family, and implant characteristics so that the educational factors most conducive to maximum implant benefit could be identified. We tested 136 children from across the United States and Canada. All were 8 or 9 years of age, had an onset of deafness before 3 years of age, underwent implantation by 5 years of age, and resided in a monolingual English-speaking home environment. Characteristics of the child and the family (primarily nonverbal IQ) accounted for approximately 20% of the variance in outcome after implantation. An additional 24% was accounted for by implant characteristics and 12% by educational variables, particularly communication mode. Oral education appears to be an important educational choice for children who have undergone cochlear implantation before 5 years of age.

Age Factors↗