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Child Hearing Research

About the Lab

The Child Hearing Research Laboratory is the site for studies on the development of hearing and listening abilities in young children. One focus of this research has included children’s ability to hear and distinguish sounds in both quiet and noisy (less ideal) listening conditions.

Projects supported in the laboratory address how normally developing children process auditory information and how those abilities change with maturation, how processing may be disrupted in children with language and/or learning disorders, how auditory and learning skills may be affected by poor acoustic environments, and how performance on behavioural tests correlates with physiologic development as derived from evoked potential studies.

Work has included collaboration on the development, validation and verification of a portable device for psychoacoustic evaluation that can be used in a clinical setting. Additional collaborative research has addressed the utility of electrophysiological measurement in assessing the integrity of the auditory nervous system.

The Child Hearing Research Laboratory includes a full-sized sound booth and equipment for stimulus and experimental control. Using both custom developed and commercially available software they are able to test the psychoacoustic abilities of preschool- and early school-aged children as well as adults.