Although there are extensive resources in ways to assess hearing loss and outcomes of hearing intervention in children and adults, research is needed to be more innovative to assess hearing health care in a multifaceted way. The first article in this SIG 7 activity includes information about a new pediatric speech in noise screener Hearing Assessment in Response to Noise Screener (HeARS) that can be used as an app. School-age children spend a significant amount of time in noisy listening environments and research has demonstrated that background noise can have a detrimental effect on speech-language as well as academic performance. This is even more prominent in children with hearing loss. Having said that, there are not many ways to evaluate speech understanding in noise performance for these children. This article discusses the preliminary results of using this app on children aged 4 to 14 years. The test allows assessing children’s ability to understand speech in presence of noise in varying signal to noise ratios (SNR) conditions. Their study concludes that this test is acceptable to use in children and can accurately demonstrate increasing difficulty in speech understanding with decreasing SNR. This test has the potential to be used by clinicians in making audiology assessment more accessible. Next, the second article includes information on quality-of-life outcomes after cochlear implantation. Although cochlear implants have been shown to improve quality of life, these quality-of-life changes can be perceived differently by the implant recipient and their communication partners. This article discusses the preliminary results of a case study that explored general and hearing related quality of life changes after implantation, as perceived by the recipients and their frequent communication partners. Their study concludes that although results for both groups were comparable, there was low agreement in the disease-specific quality of life change ratings. This suggests the importance of better communication between recipients and their partners and the importance of including communication partners in hearing health care.

Learning Outcomes
You will be able to:

• utilize the pediatric hearing in noise screener app to make hearing assessment in noise more realistic and accessible
• describe not only the importance of including frequent communication partners’ while assessing quality of changes in cochlear implant recipients, but also the outcomes of multiple quality of life assessments in cochlear implant recipients and their communication partner

Assessment Type
Self-assessment—Think about what you learned and report on the Completion Form how you will use your new knowledge.

Articles in This Course

1. Preliminary Findings From the Hearing Assessment in Response to Noise Screener: A New Pediatric Tool for Measuring Speech Identification in Noise by Julia Irwin, Jessica Sullivan, Barbara Fernandes, and Alyssa Lotto, published in SIG 7, Volume 8, Issue 6, December 2023
2. An Exploration of Quality of Life Perceptions of Cochlear Implant Recipients and Their Frequent Communication Partners by Jessica L. Bishop and Ashley G. Flagge, published in SIG 7, Volume 8, Issue 6, December 2023