This study assessed the effects of age and working memory capacity on dichotic listening and temporal sequencing. Double Dichotic Digit Test (DDT), Pitch Pattern Sequence Test (PPST) and Digit Span Test were administered on 40 healthy adults with hearing thresholds of not greater than 30 dB HL across octave frequencies from 250 to 4000 Hz. Twenty young (20–30 years old) and 20 older (50–65 years old) adults were included in the study. Results showed that the older group had significantly lower scores in DDT, PPST and working memory capacity measures than the young subjects. Working memory capacity was positively correlated with PPST but not with DDT, suggesting that DDT might be more auditory-modality-specific than PPST.

This paper presents a design and implementation of least mean square (LMS) adaptive filter for use in active noise control (ANC) application. The filter has been designed and synthesized with Altera Quartus II development platform and implemented on Cyclone II FPGA available on Altera DE2 development board. Architecture of the adaptive filter is based on conventional multiplier-adder to realize the multiply and accumulate (MAC) operation for FIR, implementing 64 filter tap with 9- bit signed integer coefficients. A uniform random signal with the bandwidth of 24 KHz is used as the test and reference signal for the filter verification. This signal is generated internally on FPGA based on LFSR technique. Performance of the filter is evaluated by means of convergence speed (with different step size, ¿ ) and comparison of adaptive filter coefficients with the unknown system. A fixed filter is programmed to behave as a bandpass FIR Hamming-type window with the cut-off frequency from 250 Hz to 3400 Hz to act as the unknown system. The results conclude that the LMS adaptive filter designed have successfully adapted with the unknown system with the fastest convergence speed of 1.46 ms at 1/2¹⁰ step size.

To determine the benefits of cochlear implantation in hearing loss children with multiple disabilities (MD) in terms of auditory outcomes, speech performance, and their quality of life. This was a cross sectional study from January 2019 to December 2020 in which thirty-one children with hearing loss and multiple disabilities were evaluated. Their improvement in auditory and speech performances were assessed using Categories of Auditory Performance version II (CAP-II) and the Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) scales. The assessment was done at 6-month intervals, with the baseline evaluation done at least six months after activation of the implant. Parents were asked to fill the Parents Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children (PEACH) diary and Perceived Benefit Questionnaire (PBQ) to evaluate the child's quality of life. All 31 children have Global Developmental Delay (GDD), with 11 having an additional disability. Both mean CAP-II and SIR scores showed significant improvement with increased hearing age (p < 0.05) after 6-month intervals. In addition, 20 out of 31 children (64.5%) have achieved verbal communication after implantation. The mean PEACH score in quiet was significantly better than in noise (p = 0.007) and improved with the increased of hearing age. The majority of parents (96%‒100%) perceived a cochlear implant as beneficial to their child in terms of auditory response, awareness, interaction, communication, and speech development. Cochlear implantation had shown benefits in children with multiple disabilities. Outcome measures should not only focus on auditory and speech performances but the improvement in quality of life. Hence, individualized each case with realistic expectation from families must be emphasized in this group of children. Level 3.