This Key Project is focused on developing guidelines for novel patient- and family centric approaches to (re)habilitation of language and literacy deficits in children and elderly clients. This project is also trialling game-based training to encourage children and adults to develop real-world listening skills addressing their specific hearing deficits.
Research in this area is aimed at identifying how we can intervene to improve language and literacy deficits arising as a consequence of hearing loss, in young and in school-aged children. This extends to how speech perception can be enhanced for children with APD through training that helps them to address challenging listening situations; and what insights this will provide to develop an appropriate intervention for use with elderly adults with APD.
Finally, the potential benefits of combining behavioural training with pharmacological therapies (e.g. use of drugs that encourage new neural connections) to remediate APD and tinnitus is being explored.
The project is exploring how clinician intervention can to best effect improve language and literacy deficits arising from hearing loss.
The three sub-projects within this project are listed below:
Project Leader: Dr Megan Gilliver
This project is examining the use of special audio recording technology (the LENA system) to assess the auditory environment of hearing-impaired children and using this detailed information to tailor therapy programs for individual families.
Project Leader/PhD Student: Dawn Choo
This project is determining the best approaches to intervention to improve speech perception in challenging listening situations such as in children with Auditory Processing Disorders (APD).
Project Leader: Dr Dani Tomlin
This project is developing new intervention therapies to improve speech perception in challenging listening situations such as elderly adults with Auditory Processing Disorders.
Project Leader: Prof. Chris Davis
This project is focused on improving speech perception in adults who have had extended periods of deafness, and/or decrease tinnitus perception through a combination of auditory training and pharmacology.
Project Leader: Aleisha Davis
This project is focused on how best to make auditory rehabilitation a patient-centric healthcare delivery model.
Project Leader: Dr Caitlin Barr
