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Research
The
Audiology
Research
Laboratory
(ARL) has been in existence since 1978,
residing at Vanderbilt University from 1978-1986, then moving to
Indiana University in June of 1986. The focus of the laboratory has
consistently been on behavioral research with adults, both those
having normal hearing and those with impaired hearing. Research in
the ARL is centered on behavioral measurement of various aspects of
auditory perception for simple and complex sounds, including speech.
Since about 1990, the ARL began to explore auditory perceptual
deficits in older adults, individuals who not only often have
peripheral hearing loss, but who may also have concomitant
central-auditory or cognitive problems as well. This work has
consisted of both basic laboratory investigation of auditory
perception and clinical research examining the benefits provided by
hearing aids to older adults. The ARL is fortunate to have been
supported by a variety of Federal funding agencies continuously since
its inception in 1978, including the National Science Foundation
(NSF), the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health
(NIOSH), the Veterans Administration (VA, Rehabilitative Research and
Engineering), and especially, the National Institutes of Health (the
National Institute of Aging, NIA, and the National Institute of
Deafness and other Communication Disorders, NIDCD).
Most
of
the
ongoing
research activities of the ARL are centered around two
research projects funded by the NIA. These two projects are
summarized briefly as follows:
-
Speech Recognition by
the Hearing Impaired Elderly (R01-AG-008293-16): This project seeks to
identify peripheral, central-auditory, and cognitive factors that
contribute to the speech-understanding difficulties of older adults
with impaired hearing. Both laboratory and clinical research is
conducted in this project and the focus in recent years has been on the
perception of amplified speech by older adults. Studies are also
ongoing that evaluate interventions, such as auditory training, aimed
at reducing the speech-understanding deficits experienced by older
adults when listening to amplified speech, especially in backgrounds of
competing speech.
-
Aging and Temporal
Processing: A Multi-modality Study (R01-AG-022334-05): This project is
a collaborative venture between the ARL, Professor
James Craig’s
laboratory, studying tactile perception, and Professor
Tom Busey’s
laboratory, studying visual perception and cognition. The focus is
on
temporal processing, ranging from gap-detection to temporal-order
judgments to temporal masking, studied in hearing, vision and touch
across the adult lifespan (18-90 yrs of age). One practical outcome of
this research may be the delineation of subgroups of older adults who
have modality-specific processing problems as older adults, including
those with “central auditory processing” difficulties.
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