Virtual reality games help deaf children in the UK understand speech
Researchers found that exposing kids to video games could help them develop stronger auditory localisation skills.
Researchers have found a peculiar ally in the fight to help children who are profoundly deaf. To enhance the children’s ability to identify sounds and comprehend speech, they employ computer games.
A project called Bears – for Both Ears is designed for kids who were born deaf and had to have twin cochlear implants.
According to Imperial College London professor and audio engineer Lorenzo Picinali, these kids are profoundly deaf. The researchers have discovered that playing computer games can significantly increase the effectiveness of the primary therapies needed to restore their hearing.
In one game, the player runs a food stand while using a virtual reality headset, receiving points for each order that is filled. As the player encounters increasingly complex requests from cartoon characters, the pace quickens. They are fired at from a variety of angles in an ever-faster sequence. Concurrently, background noises become more disorganised and louder. Though extremely difficult, the game helps kids become better at localising sound, which helps them comprehend speech, according to Picinali.
The study has shown that one’s ability to understand what someone is saying improves with one’s ability to localise sounds, or identify the source of disturbances. Playing computer games can help someone become more adept at hearing and understanding speech in noisy settings.
Picinali continued by saying that a person’s hearing is affected by their head size and ear structure.
A computer game that encourages children to aim at rapidly fading objects until they can only be recognised by auditory cues is among the other innovations made by Imperial. Others demand that players aim for targets that emit sounds using different pitches.
According to Picinali, the fact that kids with implants were participating in game design is vital. They have been essential to the project’s growth from the beginning.
Cochlea implants, which are placed on the skull behind the ears, transform air vibrations into electrical signals that may be sent to the brain and received as sound. This is in contrast to hearing aids, which just enhance noises and are therefore of little value to children who are severely deaf.
But frequently, these signals are jumbled and unsettling, which causes customers to perceive incredibly distorted noises. With a cochlear implant, localising sounds and following conversations in noisy settings are still challenging, and some users find it difficult to adjust to the noises they produce.
For youngsters who are profoundly deaf, an implant is a lifesaver, however Picinali noted that they are difficult to adjust to. Training with computer games should aid in the team’s goal of making it easier for the subjects to understand the signals being sent to their brains. Their aural systems are being remapped with their assistance.
About 6,500 children in the UK are profoundly deaf, and the only way they can hear again is through a cochlear implant. Over 300 children with hearing impairments will be recruited for the experiment, which will be supervised by Debi Vickers at Cambridge University and Dan Jiang at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. With help from University College London’s comprehensive clinical trials center, the project will be finished in roughly 18 months.
It is expected that the end product would not just help children who have cochlear implants, but it would also greatly improve the hearing of all 50,000 or so deaf children in the UK.
According to Katarina Poole, another member of the Imperial team, severe deafness in children can result from a variety of factors, including infections, accidents, and genetics. This could have a significant impact on thousands of children’s lives.
