What's Different About Children? Teresa Ching A child needs hearing aids when there is a peripheral hearing loss. For the same degree of hearing loss, there is no research evidence to suggest that the amplification characteristics needed for children differ from those for adults. Nevertheless, there are special considerations that should be given to fitting children for several reasons. Firstly, hearing aids will be used for speech and language development of young children. Therefore, maximising speech intelligibility at comfortable listening levels should be the overriding objective for fitting children whereas other objectives may be applicable to some adults. This amplification goal for children needs to be realised both in the hearing aid selection and the evaluation stages. Secondly, children often have less control over the volume setting of the amplification device compared to adults. Gain selection and the use of compression are therefore more critical for a child than for an adult. Thirdly, a child has a smaller ear canal than an average adult, and this has to be taken into account when a hearing aid is selected. Fourthly, younger children require a better signal-to-noise ratio than adults to achieve the same level of performance. Accordingly, this paper presents a hearing aid prescription procedure that aims to maximise speech intelligibility, and demonstrates two evaluation procedures that aim to optimise hearing aid characteristics for speech intelligibility for children who use hearing aids. Issues relating to adjustment of hearing aids in a coupler for child use, signal level, and prescription of gain will also be discussed. |