HA users, other individuals, and organizations interested in HAs leave their digital footprint on a wide variety of social media sources. The community connects, offers support, and shares information on a variety of HA-related issues. The HA community is as active in social media utilization as other groups, such as the cochlear implant community, even though the patterns of their social media use are different because of their unique needs.

The medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferent system modifies cochlear output to aid signal detection in noise, but the precise role of efferents in speech-in-noise understanding remains unclear. The current study examined the contribution of the MOC reflex for speech recognition in noise in 30 normal-hearing young adults (27 females, mean age = 22.7 yr). The MOC reflex was assessed using contralateral inhibition of transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions. Speech-in-noise perception was evaluated using the coordinate response measure presented in ipsilateral speech-shaped noise at signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) ranging from −12 to 0 dB. Performance was assessed without and with the presence of contralateral noise to activate the MOC reflex. Performance was significantly better with contralateral noise only at the lowest SNR. There was a trend of better performance with increasing contralateral inhibition at the lowest SNR. Threshold of the psychometric function was significantly correlated with contralateral inhibition. Response time on the speech task was not significantly correlated with contralateral inhibition. Results suggest that the MOC reflex contributes to listening in low SNRs and the relationship between the MOC reflex and perception is highly dependent upon the task characteristics.

The present study objectively quantified the efferent-induced changes in the sharpness of cochlear tuning estimates and compared these alterations in cochlear tuning between adults and children. Click evoked otoacoustic emissions with and without contralateral broadband noise were recorded from 15 young adults and 14 children aged between 5 and 10 yrs. Time-frequency distributions of click evoked otoacoustic emissions were obtained via the S-transform, and the otoacoustic emission latencies were used to estimate the sharpness of cochlear tuning. Contralateral acoustic stimulation caused a significant reduction in the sharpness of cochlear tuning estimates in the low to mid frequency region, but had no effect in the higher frequencies (3175 and 4000 Hz). The magnitude of efferent-induced changes in cochlear tuning estimates was similar between adults and children. The current evidence suggests that the stimulation of the medial olivocochlear efferent neurons causes similar alterations in cochlear frequency selectivity in adults and children.

The goal of the current study was to characterize the normative features of wideband acoustic immittance in children for describing the functional maturation of the middle ear in 5 to 12-year-old children. Absorbance and group delay were measured in adults and three groups of children, 5–6, 7–9 and 10–12-year-olds, in a cross-sectional design. Absorbance showed significant effects of the age group in four out of ten center frequencies of one-half-octave bins from 211 to 6000 Hz, while there was no significant effect for group delay at any frequency. Older children (10–12 years) showed absorbance similar to adults. Test-retest reliability was high for absorbance for all age groups. However, group delay was modestly reliable only for adults. We conclude that the middle ear transmission follows a protracted period of maturation for high frequencies and reaches adult-like feature by 10 to 12 years of age.