Laboratory for Auditory Perception in Children and Adults

Focus of Lab

Our lab focuses to study whether and how hearing loss affects the ability to use auditory cues for speech understanding differently in children and adults. The findings will inform researchers and clinicians which auditory cues are more accessible and important to individuals with hearing loss at a given age. Additionally, we seek approaches to compensate for the vital cues that are inaccessible to children and adults with hearing loss. The findings will provide insights for the design of sensory aids (e.g., hearing aids and cochlear implants) and auditory rehabilitation tools.

To fulfil our research goals, we conduct experiments in which participants perform listening tasks to identify target signals. Participants are individuals with normal hearing, or with hearing loss, or using cochlear implants. The signals involve natural speech, synthetic speech, and non-speech sounds presented in the presence or absence of various types of noise. With careful manipulations on physical properties (i.e., auditory cues) of signals and background noise, analysis of participants’ performance will provide answers to our research questions.

Personnel

Yingjiu Nie, Ph.D., Director
Lara Leggio: Research/Teaching Assistant (AuD dissertation)
Bonnie Purtill: Research/Teaching Assistant (AuD dissertation)
Ariana Morris (AuD dissertation): Co-advising with Dr. Rout
Taylor Arbogast (AuD dissertation)
Victoria (Tori) Whitney (AuD dissertation)
Caroline Whillhite: Honors Thesis
Penelope Franklin: Undergraduate Volunteer

Alumni

Harley Wheeler, AuD (2020) (PhD student at University of Minnesota)

Dissertation: Music and speech perception by prelingually-deafened young listeners with cochlear implants

Diana Burke, BS in CSD (2019)

Honors Project (IRB faculty supervisor): Deaf Education: The Past, Present, and Future

Leanne Gardner, AuD (2019) (Audiologist at Centa Medical Group PA)

Dissertation: Audiologists’ preferences in programming cochlear implants

Victoria Andre, AuD (2019) (Audiologist at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital)

Dissertation: Music and speech perception in children using sung speech: Effects of neurocognitive factors

Michael Morikawa, AuD (2018) (Audiologist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital)
- Dissertation: Melodic contour identification and speech recognition by school-aged children
Alexandria Matz, AuD (2018) (Audiologist at Eastern Virginia Medical School)
- Dissertation: The build-up of auditory stream segregation in adult cochlear implant users: Effect of differences in frequency and amplitude-modulation rate
Sarah Troy, BS in CSD (2017) & Lindsey Seyfried, BS in CSD (2017)
- Honors Project: Effects of age, timbre, pitch contour, and background noise on melodic contour identification and sentence recognition by children
Alexandra Short, AuD (2017)
Harley Wheeler, BS in CSD (2016)
- Honors Thesis: Build-up effect of auditory stream segregation using amplitude-modulated narrowband noise
Abigail Compton, BS in CSD (2016)
Mary Shannon Carroll, BS in CSD (2015)
Caleb Harrington, BS in CSD (2015)
Mick Blackwell, BS in Engineering (2015)

Current Projects

* denotes student coauthor

Audiologists’ practices in cochlear implant services

This project entails a collaborative effort from Dr. Rout at JMU and Dr. Heiner at Virginia Commonwealth University on understanding the audiological services for individuals using cochlear implants in clinical settings. An AuD student has completed the dissertation and published a peer-reviewed journal article.

Browning*, L., Nie, Y., Rout, A., & Heiner, M. (2020). Audiologists’ preferences in programming cochlear implants: A preliminary report. Cochlear Implants International, 1–13. Advance online publication.

Speech perception in noisy environments by children: Effects of peripheral and central factors

This project has been supported by the Teaching/Research Grant from the College of Health and Behavioral Studies. Three AuD students have completed their dissertations in this area and served as coauthors in a peer-reviewed journal article.

Nie, Y., Galvin (Jr III), J., Morikawa*, M., Andre*, V., Wheeler*, H., and Fu, QJ. (2018). Music and speech perception in children using sung speech. Trends In Hearing, 22, 1-16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/2331216518766810.

The attentional effect on stream segregation in cochlear implant users

This project has been supported by the Teaching/Research Grant from the College of Health and Behavioral Studies. A paper was published at Frontiers in Psychology in 2015. An AuD student and an Honors student have completed their dissertation and thesis in this area. Both students have presented their work at regional and national scholarly conferences.

Matz*, A. and Nie, Y. (2016, October). The build-up of auditory stream segregation in adult cochlear implant users: Effect of differences in frequency and amplitude-modulation rate. Poster presentation at The Ruth Symposium in Audiology and Hearing Science. Harrisonburg,
Wheeler*, H., Nie, Y., and Matz*, A. (2016, March). Build-up Effect of Auditory Stream Segregation Using Amplitude-Modulated Narrowband Noise. Poster presentation at the American Auditory Society 2016 Scientific & Technology Meeting. Scottsdale, AZ.
Wheeler, H.J., Nie Y (2016) Build-up Effect of Auditory Stream Segregation Using Amplitude-Modulated Narrowband Noise. In: Communication Sciences and Disorders, vol. Senior Honors Harrisonburg: James Madison University. commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors201019/216/

Recent Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications