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To investigate listening skills in infant hearing aid users using the LittlEARS® Auditory Questionnaire (LEAQ). Caregivers completed the LEAQ, and hearing aid data logging was recorded, at infant age 3–7 months and 7–21 months. Seventy infant hearing aid users with permanent bilateral hearing loss, no developmental comorbidities, aged 3–7 months at first visit. Infants with mild and moderate losses tended to have scores within the normative range at the early time point (88%), but 29% were below the normative range when older. Thirty percent of infants with severe hearing loss were outside the normative range at the early time point and 60% outside the normative range when older. Infants with profound loss were almost always (95%) outside the normative range. At the later time point, and for infants with severe-to-profound loss, low LEAQ scores were associated with fewer daily hours hearing aid use. Scores were poorer than previous reports in the literature for infant hearing aid users. This study provides further knowledge on infant listening performance and hearing aid use over time that can be used to guide management of individual cases and to develop and audit service quality improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) is a change in neural activity in response to sound, and is of interest for audiological assessment of infants, especially those who use hearing aids. Within this population, CAEP waveforms are known to vary substantially across individuals, which makes detecting the CAEP through visual inspection a challenging task. It also means that some of the best automated CAEP detection methods used in adults are probably not suitable for this population. This study therefore evaluates and optimizes the performance of new and existing methods for aided (i.e., the stimuli are presented through subjects' hearing aid(s)) CAEP detection in infants with hearing loss. Methods include the conventional Hotellings T2 test, various modified q-sample statistics, and two novel variants of T2 statistics, which were designed to exploit the correlation structure underlying the data. Various additional methods from the literature were also evaluated, including the previously best-performing methods for adult CAEP detection. Data for the assessment consisted of aided CAEPs recorded from 59 infant hearing aid users with mild to profound bilateral hearing loss, and simulated signals. The highest test sensitivities were observed for the modified T2 statistics, followed by the modified q-sample statistics, and lastly by the conventional Hotelling's T2 test, which showed low detection rates for ensemble sizes <80 epochs. The high test sensitivities at small ensemble sizes observed for the modified T2 and q-sample statistics are especially relevant for infant testing, as the time available for data collection tends to be limited in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate listening skills in infant hearing aid users using the LittlEARS ® Auditory Questionnaire (LEAQ)., Design: Caregivers completed the LEAQ, and hearing aid data logging was recorded, at infant age 3-7 months and 7-21 months., Study Sample: Seventy infant hearing aid users with permanent bilateral hearing loss, no developmental comorbidities, aged 3-7 months at first visit., Results: Infants with mild and moderate losses tended to have scores within the normative range at the early time point (88%), but 29% were below the normative range when older. Thirty percent of infants with severe hearing loss were outside the normative range at the early time point and 60% outside the normative range when older. Infants with profound loss were almost always (95%) outside the normative range. At the later time point, and for infants with severe-to-profound loss, low LEAQ scores were associated with fewer daily hours hearing aid use. Scores were poorer than previous reports in the literature for infant hearing aid users., Conclusions: This study provides further knowledge on infant listening performance and hearing aid use over time that can be used to guide management of individual cases and to develop and audit service quality improvements.