Beyond Speech: Towards better communication for children with hearing loss

Despite the benefits of early newborn hearing screening and early intervention programs for children with hearing loss, most still experience academic and social challenges at school. This is partly due to ongoing listening effort, leading to communicative breakdown. This project aims to identify the locus of the communicative challenges these children face during daily discourse interactions. The outcomes will identify which levels of language are most compromised and will inform future interventions to reduce children’s listening effort. This will be achieved by bringing together researchers in basic science with hearing service providers, parents and industry, providing an innovative model for solving multidisciplinary challenges.