Children who are hard of hearing (CHH) have restricted access to acoustic and linguistic information. In most cases, hearing aids (HAs) are the primary approach to improving auditory access for this population. HAs are not the only option available for increasing auditory access in CHH, however. Personal remote microphone (RM) systems reduce the negative effects of noisy, reverberant room acoustics, or distance between speakers and listeners. It is unclear how many preschool-age CHH have access to this assistive technology, when children are being fit with personal RM, or how often children utilize personal RM on a daily basis. The goals of this presentation are twofold: to report current practices with RM use in preschool-age CHH to provide insight into how this assistive technology is being used and to compare language outcomes of preschool-age CHH with and without access to RM systems.
- Identify the percentage of children with home and school RM systems.
- Describe the effect of home RM receipt on language outcomes in children with hearing loss
- Identify factors that predict likelihood of receiving an RM system for home use.
