Dr. Samira Anderson, a faculty member of NACS, was recently awarded an Early Career Research Award (R21) from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. This grant will fund a project examining some of the contributing factors to speech understanding difficulties experienced by older adults.

Dr. Anderson worked as a clinical audiologist for more than two decades prior to obtaining her Ph.D., and her observations of older adults’ hearing difficulties inspired her to pursue research that would lead to better understanding and treatment of these impairments. As a clinician she was frustrated by the inadequacies of the current audiologic assessment protocol when trying to predict communication difficulties or benefits from treatment.

This R21 will use an innovative approach to evaluate speech perception in older adults. Older adults are known to have increased difficulty when the timing cues of speech are degraded. These timing cues are important for distinguishing between similar words, such as “wheat” or “weed.” To better understand the nature of these difficulties, Dr. Anderson will use electrophysiology to objectively measure the brain’s response to words differing in temporal cues and will also assess behavioral perception of these same words. The results of this study should lead to more sensitive testing of hearing function, and to treatment strategies that target the specific nature of the deficit.

More information on the project can be found on the NIH website: https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9230515&icde=31139160