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Widex supports groundbreaking research project in the paediatric field | A new approach has been taken in investigating the significance of early intervention with newborn hearing impaired children and their future speech development. Widex supports the WHISPER project both financially and with other resources, and plays an active leading role in the project.
Today it is a well-known audiological fact that there is a relationship between early intervention in infants’ hearing loss and their later language development. The earlier infants’ hearing loss is detected and treated, the better their language development will progress, independently of the degree of hearing loss.
However, very few studies have investigated how language development is influenced when hearing impaired newborns are treated soon after birth. And very little research has specifically focused on the interaction between the child’s sound perception and the type and degree of hearing loss.
The Widex Hearing Impaired Speech Research (WHISPER) project is being developed by the Center for Language Acquisition at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in cooperation with Widex. It is also an international project involving participation of linguistics, psycholinguistics, audiologist and statisticians from SDU, Widex and Oxford University.
The purpose is to study the early language acquisition of both normal hearing and hearing impaired children.
From birth and during the first years of childhood, language is developed and the child’s language acquisition is highly dependent on good hearing. The newborn infant meets a world consisting of many sounds. In time, the child will establish correspondence between sound and meaning, such as words.
There are four sound-related processes of special significance for the child in the early development of language. They are:
 Segmentation of speech sounds (when the baby is able to identify syllables and words in speech) |
| Construction of sound representations (when the baby is able to distinguish between sound units, for example “ba and “da” and identify the different sounds units) |
| Association between sound representations and meaning (when the baby starts associating a word with its meaning) |
| Association between sound representations and speech production (when the baby starts producing the first words) |
The overall objective of WHISPER is to investigate and compare the early processing of speech sounds by normally hearing and hearing impaired children. Paying special attention to whether reduced access to the auditory signal – with the use of amplification – implies a diverging development of sound processing, sound representation and speech production as compared to the development in hearing children.
Timeframe for the project | The project will run over five years and comprise several sub-studies, which will be organised chronologically within the age group 0-3 years.
With the implementation of the Newborn Hearing Screening programme in Denmark from January 2005, it will be possible for more deaf or hearing impaired infants to be diagnosed very early, allowing early intervention for these infants.
Why Widex supports WHISPER | During recent years the paediatric field has been considered increasingly relevant for Widex. All hearing aid developments achieved with digital signal processing in the last years have introduced new and refined methods for managing hearing loss in children. However, the increased complexity may or may not have an impact on the development of the user’s language acquisition. On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that the exciting technical advantages made available with digital technology must be combined with an intervention programme as early as possible to minimise the consequences of hearing loss during children’s development and finally to improve the quality of life of hearing impaired children.
The newborn hearing screening programme in Denmark opens up new possibilities for following the speech and language development of very young hearing impaired children when fitted with hearing aids.
The results obtained with WHISPER can provide information that can be useful in the development of new hearing aid products, especially for children. In the wider perspective, the project can help to develop the base for pedagogical practice and development of technological aids for children with difficulties in acquiring language.
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