Hearing training

Mike Sharples

Learning Sciences Research Institute

University of Nottingham

www.nottingham.ac.uk/lsri/msh

How can we design assistivetechnology to help people learnto cope with hearing problems?

Coping with hearing problems

• Learning to use auditory assistivedevices

–Adaptive fitting of hearing aids

–Adapting to transformed sounds

–Developing strategies for interaurallistening

• Learning to communicate despitehearing impairment

Personalised learning that ispart of everyday life and isproductive

Learning as…

• Changing behaviour

• Enhancing skills

• Storing information

• Gaining knowledge

• Making sense of the world

• Interpreting reality in a different way

Changing behaviour Tone/ syllable/ speechdiscrimination

Enhancing skills Sound localisation

Storing information Improving workingmemory

Gaining knowledge Knowing when towear a hearing aid

Making sense of theworld

Interpreting noisyconversation

Interpreting reality ina different way

Adjusting socially

Personalised training

• Matched– Training matches hearing problem

• Adaptive– Training continually adjusts to performance

• Contextual– Training adjusts to location, time available

• Customisable– User can adjust the visual appearance and

presentation

• Informative– Gives feedback on performance

Taking learning into everyday life

Productive learning

• The stronger the learner’s motivation,the greater the engagement

• The greater the engagement, thelonger the time-on-task

• The longer the time-on-task, themore productive the learning

Motivation

• Extrinsic motivation– Graphics

– Feedback

– Reward

• Intrinsic motivation– Challenge

– Control

– Curiosity

– Levels

– Cycle of engagement and reflection

Example – changing behaviour

• Tone discrimination

• Game mechanics

• Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation