Improving the assessment, management and remediation of listening difficulties in children

The Co-funded Fellowship has three main goals. First, to create and implement innovative diagnostic tests that better define the cause of listening problems in children. Second, to create auditory training programs that remediate these problems. Input from the industry partner will be sought in respect to the clinical design and application of the various software products. Third, in the second year of the fellowship apply for a larger grant (see later) to establish an Australian Research Network for Auditory Processing Research in collaboration with a number of universities around Australia. The network grant will be administered from Macquarie University and will provide funding for additional PhD students to collect normative, test-retest reliability and clinical data on the various prototype diagnostic tests and training programs developed from the Co-Funded Fellowship, as well as to develop additional tests and training modules and establish clinical protocols to support translation of the research into clinical practice, world-wide, for maximum impact. It is anticipated that the industry partner of the Co-Funding Fellowship will provide early take-up of the tools produced.