Hearing & Technology
DAN FOGERTY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION SCIENCES AND DISORDERS Arnold School of Public Health Ph.D., Indiana University, 2010
Listen up, there’s going to be a test — if Dan Fogerty has his say, a whole battery of them. Fogerty, director of USC’s Speech Perception Laboratory, leads a research team trying to fine tune hearing aid technology. A traditional hearing aid can be very important for treating the main limitations in speech understanding associated with hearing loss, but it’s less than a perfect technology. The brain plays an even bigger role in processing speech, and for people with hearing loss, understanding that role could make a big difference. “It’s not just the ear. The mind is processing things. Understanding the cognitive requirements, and knowing what are the cognitive capabilities of a given individual are crucial, too,” he says. Fogerty’s current research is funded in part by a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create a battery of tests to assess how cognitive abilities affect an individual’s processing of speech in different dynamic listening environments. “The challenge is to be able to improve these devices, but for them to still be affordable, too,” he says. 27