Child Hearing Research

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About the Lab

Lab Director


pallen@uwo.ca

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.

Lab Members

Prudence Allen

Associate Professor, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders

  • Assessment of developmental changes in chidren's ability to process complex sounds
  • Central auditory processing disorders
  • Effects of noise on academic skills and achievement
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Assistant Professor/Clinical Education Coordinator, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders

  • Basic and advanced hearing assessment
  • Auditory processing assessment
  • Auditory perception
  • Objective measurement of auditory function

Students

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Hasitha Wimalaranthna

  • Biomedical signal processing
  • Machine learning
  • Screening children with listening difficulties

Lab Alumni

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Maximillian Tran-Luong

Master's Student

  • Objective measures of auditory function
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Minh  Duong

Research Assistant

  • Data repositories of hearing assessment research

Publications

Visit for more information.

Participate in a Research Study

Interested in participating in a research study? Visit the How You Can Help section of our website for more information.