Effects of Remote Microphone Hearing Aids on Classroom Listening, Spatial Listening, and Attention in School-Aged Children With Auditory Processing Disorder

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is a disorder where the functions of the ear (outer, middle, inner) are normal but the person has difficulty identifying or discriminating sounds (1). For children with APD it is particularly difficult to hear when the listening conditions are not ideal. For example, when there is background noise it becomes really challenging to focus on the speaker. Two other factors that influence their hearing ability are reverberation and the distance from the speaker (2). Some symptoms reported for APD are listening difficulties in background noise, attention and memory problems, and distractibility (3,4). Children with APD have worse skills in speech perception in noise compared to typically developing children (5,6) and have also have poorer sustained auditory attention compared to children suspected of APD (7).

Remote Microphone Hearing Aids (RMHAs) are a management approach recommended for children with APD. These are wireless listening devices that pick up the speaker's voice and transmit it to a receiver in the listener's ear. The use of this system helps improve the signal-to-noise ratio for children and bypasses the negative effects of background noise and reverberation in the classroom (2,8,9). There have not been many studies, though. That looked into the effects of RMHA on children with APD. Previous research suggests that children with APD after a prolonged use of RMHAs benefit from improved speech perception which is possibly linked to an enhanced auditory system (9). Adding to that, children with APD have shown improved speech in noise perception when using the RMHA, hence emphasizing the advantages of the device in discriminating speech in background noise (9,10).

Sustained attention and the ability of children with APD to listen in spatialised noise after RMHA use has been examined by one study (10). It did not show improvement (unaided) in any of the two tests. However, this was a non-randomised trial that did not use a control group. As the central point of this study will be the use of the RMHA by children with APD for 6 months, it is expected that the findings could add valuable information on the subject.

Aim and hypotheses The aim of the study is to examine the effect of a 6-month RMHA use on self-reported listening in the classroom, speech perception in noise, speech perception in spatialised noise and on attention skills.

Hypotheses: