HEARing CRC Supervisor: Mridula Sharma

HEARing CRC Project: R1.1.3 Auditory Processing and Language Impairment in School-Aged Children

Title:  Electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography investigation of audiovisual integration in children with auditory processing and reading disorders.

Project details: It is commonly acknowledged that visual cues benefits speech intelligibility and comprehension in different listening environments (noise as well as quiet). Children with auditory processing disorders (APD) are a heterogeneous group (ASHA, 1996; Chermak, 2002; Ramus et al., 2003) who are described as having difficulties with different listening tasks, e.g. listening in background noise. It has been showed that there is a relationship between auditory processing and reading disorders (Sharma et al, 2009), and reading is an illustration of an important task that requires auditory-visual integration skills (Hayes et al., 2003; Norrix et al., 2007).

The aim of this study is to investigate; using electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography, the AV integration abilities in children with clinically diagnosed APD compared to children with normal hearing and age-appropriate reading as well as compensated readers, who have overcome previous reading disorders, in order to investigate if AV integration abilities are compromised in children with APD.