Much of the hospital's success in identifying and treating children with hearing loss is the result of the rapid transfer of research findings from laboratories to clinic and bedside.

Areas of Research - Clinical and Behavioral Studies of Human Communication

Research programs in this area are conducted by staff members with clinical responsibilities as well as staff in full-time research positions. Much of the clinically related work represents an effort to develop improved clinical procedures, in many cases drawing on resources from the Hospital's basic research programs.

The individual research programs include:

Research Participation

What do studies invlove?

All members of the clinical staff are encouraged to monitor clinical service outcomes, develop model programs, and describe case studies. We have limited the descriptions of clinically related research at the Hospital presented here to those programs where some portion of the work is federally funded.

Individual research programs described in this section are focused on:

Acoustical properties of the peripheral auditory system
Auditory perception in listeners with normal hearing and in those with sensorineural hearing loss
Use of evoked potentials and otoacoustic emissions in the early identification and quantification of hearing loss
Development of techniques for better hearing aid fitting
Development of speech perception and language organization in normal children and in those with speech, language, or hearing problems
Physiology of normal and abnormal speech and voice production, including abnormalities associated with hearing loss
Language and cognitive development in children with severe to profound hearing loss
The relation between disabilities, including hearing loss, and child abuse

The final program in this section describes Boys Town National Research Hospital's involvement in a new program to conduct randomized, multi-center clinical trials. This work is supported by individual grants from NIH, NCCAN, and the U.S. Office of Education.