Recent Publications Banai K, Amitay S (2012) Stimulus uncertainty in auditory perceptual learning. Vision research (ePub ahead of print) [PubMed] [DOI] Boyd A, Whitmer WM, Soraghan J, Akeroyd MA (2012) Auditory externalization in hearing-impaired listeners: The effect of pinna cues and number of talker. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Express Letters), in press Moore DR (2012) Stroke recovery and sensory plasticity: Common mechanisms? Developmental Psychobiology, in press Halliday LF, Taylor JL, Millward KE, Moore DR (2012) Effect of auditory training on phonological processing in mainstream primary school children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, in press [PubMed] [DOI] Millward KE, Hall RL, Ferguson MA, Moore DR (2011) Training speech-in-noise perception in mainstream school children. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology 75(11), 1408-17 [PubMed] [DOI] Barry JG, Sabisch B, Friederici AD, Brauer J (2011) Encoding: the keystone to efficient functioning of verbal short-term memory. Neuropsychologia 49(13), 3636-47 [PubMed] [DOI] Ramirez-Inscoe J, Moore DR (2011) Processes that influence communicative impairments in deaf children using cochlear implants. Ear and Hearing 32(6), 690-8 [PubMed] [DOI] View all publications from this research group
Current Projects (click to view)
Our peripheral auditory system develops early in life, but our brain’s ability to make sense of the sounds we hear can change dramatically through childhood, adulthood and into old age. As many as 1 in 10 children can hear simple sounds well, but find it difficult to make sense of more complex sounds, particularly speech, and especially when they are in a noisy environment such as a classroom. We are studying the factors that affect children’s ability to listen to sounds to try and understand where the problems are. We are also working on ways in which children who have such difficulties can be helped to learn to listen better, to try and improve their ability to cope with daily life situations.
Figure 1. We test children’s auditory skills using child-friendly computer games designed at IHR. Similar games are used for training and are based on findings from our studies.
Our brain’s remarkable ability to adapt and improve its processing of sound can also be applied in other situations. Auditory training can be useful in habilitating hearing when people receive hearing aids. Hearing aids amplify sounds in a way that makes both the “good sounds” (such as speech) and “bad sounds” (the noise) louder. Training might be able to help people improve their hearing beyond just amplification from their hearing device. Training might also be useful for people who receive cochlear implants – prostheses that enable deaf people to hear sounds. Sounds heard using cochlear implants are very different from the way a hearing person hears sounds and, although many cochlear implant users recognize speech remarkably well with their implant, the brain requires training to map those sounds onto templates laid down by inheritance or hearing experience earlier in life.
Figure 2. The ability of people to improve their auditory ability over a number of training blocks is remarkable. Here people improve their ability to hear a pitch (frequency) difference between very similar sounds (the smaller the difference, the better their performance) over a number of training sessions (Blocks). People are often 10 times better after training than they were when they started!
We are therefore interested in aspects of how the brain learns to process sounds and the factors that affect the way different people learn which, our experiments show, is strongly dependent on attention, memory and general cognitive abilities. We are also interested in the practical aspects of training – how much should be given, how training should be varied between auditory tasks, how it is affected by feedback and reward for good performance. We approach the study of these issues using psychophysics (how people respond to stimuli behaviourally; see Figures 1 and 2) and brain imaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see how training affects sound processing in the brain.
Projects
EPiC-Q (Everyday Processing in Children Questionnaire)
EPiC-Q is a questionnaire that is being developed to assess listening skills in children aged between 6-11 years. You can view information about the EPIC project here (PDF).