The Oticon (OtiS) Study

The Oticon Study, or more fondly referred to as the OtiS study, investigates behavioral and cortical plasticity from wearing hearing aids with noise reduction systems. In 2018 we completed a pilot study in children aged 6-12 years with mild to moderate hearing loss. The children's caregivers reported a significant improvement in their child’s everyday hearing. However, we did not find behavioral changes in their language, cognition or academic abilities. We used the results from this pilot to power our main study.

The figure above depicts the stimuli presentation for the Boystown speech reception task used in the OtiS Study. In the three conditions shown, the participant is seated in a sound ring of speakers and asked to repeat the target words (presented at either 0° or -60°) while speech-shaped mask noise is presented in the two speakers behind (at 135° and -135°).

We are currently analyzing the results from our main study - a double-blind clinical trial (view here at clinical trials.gov) comparing adaptation to OpenSound Navigator and Omni-directional hearing aids over eight months of use. We are using outcome measures of language, cognition and academic ability along with caregiver reports and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

This study is funded by Oticon and the Oticon Foundation.

Reference: Pinkl, J., Cash, E., Hunter, L. L., Ferguson, S., Evans, T., Nejmen, T., Hamilton, J., Moore, D. R. & Stewart, H. J. (Under review, American Journal of Audiology). Short-term pediatric acclimatization to adaptive hearing aid technology. medRxiv.

Collaborators and Funding

Collaborators: Cincinnati Children's Division of Audiology

Funding: Oticon Research Foundation, CCH Research Foundation