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Communication for Children with Hearing Impairment to optimise Language Development (COMM4CHILD) 

Hamish Innes-Brown

Senior Research Manager

Eriksholm Research Centre

Elaine Hoi Ning Ng

Principal Researcher

Centre for Applied Audiology Research, Oticon A/S

Kathleen Faulkner

Supervisor

Oticon

Alina Schulte

PhD Student

Oticon

Julia Chiossi

PhD Student

Oticon

Communication for Children with Hearing Impairment

Introduction

Children with hearing impairment risk delayed language acquisition, educational achievement, socio-emotional development, and well-being. Current intervention plans fail to prepare those children for academic achievement and social participation in contemporary society where the diversity of their needs is increasing.

Comm4CHILD is an Innovative Training Network (ITN) – a large consortium which addresses the large inter-individual heterogeneity in brain plasticity, cognitive resources, and linguistic abilities, and takes full advantage of this heterogeneity to support developing efficient communicative skills in children with hearing impairment. A group of 15 early-stage researchers (ESRs) will be trained in research and intervention in a cross-sectoral way. Comm4CHILD is a European project under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement n°860755 within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

Aims

The fifteen individual research projects that form Comm4CHILD are conceptualized within three work packages: biology (i.e., anatomical variations of the cochlea and cerebral functional reorganisation), cognition (i.e., working memory, multimodal integration in communication), and language (i.e., inter-individual differences in speech intelligibility and spelling ability).

The transversal objectives of ESRs are to enhance mapping of the factors underlying heterogeneity; advance the understanding of the predictors of linguistic communicative skills; and develop new intervention methods. A strong focus on training, interactions with stakeholders and dissemination of findings shape this innovative training network.

Methodology

Alina Schulte is a Comm4CHILD PhD student based at Eriksholm who investigates how vibrotactile input on the skin can influence auditory speech perception. Alina has performed a speech test with sentences presented in three conditions: 1) auditory alone, 2) auditory + tactile speech envelope, and 3) auditory + tactile noise. The tactile envelope consisted of low-frequency information delivered through a vibrating probe on the index fingertip.

During a second part of the experiment the test was repeated in a modified version with simultaneous functional-near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recordings to identify cortical activation patterns related to audio-tactile speech processing.

fNIRS system in Pitch Lab at Eriksholm. Alina is wearing an fNIRS cap and performs a fingertapping task, which is a common experiment to test the set-up

COMM4CHILD PEOPLE

Results

Data for 23 normal-hearing people and 14 cochlear implant users was collected. Comparable to previous literature, the results showed a significant improvement in speech understanding scores for sentences presented in the auditory + tactile speech envelope condition compared to the auditory alone condition for both participant groups (5.3% for NH and 5.4% for CI participants).

In line with the principle of inverse effectiveness, we found in the normal-hearing group that this effect was more pronounced with decreasing auditory alone speech intelligibility., reflecting that the brain can benefit most from tactile information when the auditory signal is most degraded.

Team

Hamish Innes-Brown

Senior Research Manager

Eriksholm Research Centre

Cécile Colin

Professor & Co-ordinator

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Jacqueline Leybaert

Professor & Co-ordinator

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Denis Beautemps

Supervisor

CNRS

Axelle Calcus

Professor & Supervisor

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Brigitte Charlier

Professor & Supervisor

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Fabienne Chetail

Professor & Supervisor

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Kathleen Faulkner

Supervisor

Oticon

Thomas Hueber

Supervisor

CNRS

Takayuki Ito

Supervisor

CNRS

Samuel John

Supervisor

HörSys

Edward Killan

Professor & Supervisor

University of Leeds

Andrej Kral

Professor & Supervisor

Medizinische Hochschule Hannover

Thomas Lenarz

Professor & Supervisor

HörSys

Chantal Ligny

Supervisor

Centre Comprendre et Parler

Hélène Loevenbruck

Supervisor

CNRS

Björn Lyxel

Professor & Supervisor

University of Oslo

Jeremy Marozeau

Professor & Supervisor

Technical University of Denmark

Elaine Hoi Ning Ng

Principal Researcher

Centre for Applied Audiology Research, Oticon A/S

Jackie Salter

Professor & Supervisor

University of Leeds

Jean-Luc Schwartz

Professor & Supervisor

CNRS

Ruth Swanwick

Professor & Supervisor

University of Leeds

Astrid van Wieringen

Professor & Supervisor

KU Leuven

Anne Vilain

Supervisor

CNRS

Jan Wouters

Professor & Supervisor

KU Leuven

Irem Adalilar

PhD Student

KU Leuven

Yifan Wang

PhD Student

HörSys

Niloofar Tavakoli

PhD Student

Medizinische Hochschule Hannover

Alina Schulte

PhD Student

Oticon

Cora Caron

PhD Student

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Monica Ashokumar

PhD Student

CNRS

Lyan Porto

PhD Student

KU Leuven

Julia Chiossi

PhD Student

Oticon

Kristina Burum

PhD Student

University of Oslo

Sanjana Sankar

PhD Student

CNRS

Elettra Casellato

PhD Student

University of Leeds

Nathalie Czeke

PhD Student

University of Leeds

Elodie Sabatier

PhD Student

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Lucie Van Bogaert

PhD Student

CNRS

Marie Joe Kfoury

PhD Student

Université Libre de Bruxelles

View all

Partners

  • Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

  • Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) 

  • Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH)

  • Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

  • Linköpings universitet (LiU)

  • University of Leeds

  • Centre Comprendre et Parler (CCP)

  • HörSys GmbH

View all

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