Valerie Looi

Independent Researcher

Objectives To understand adults' journey from hearing aids to cochlear implants (CIs). Methods Qualitative, exploratory design using semi-structured interviews with twelve postlingually-deafened adults. Results and Discussion All participants reported social isolation and/or depression. ‘Not hearing well enough’ was the most-common motivator to s...

Hearing aids and cochlear [ ko -clear] implants are very useful devices for children with hearing loss. But they do not completely restore hearing. Many children with hearing loss find it difficult to listen in noisy places like the playground. This is important because many social interactions create noise or occur in noisy places. While most peop...

Objectives: Children with hearing loss tend to have poorer psychosocial and quality of life outcomes than their typical-hearing (TH) peers-particularly in the areas of peer relationships and school functioning. A small number of studies for TH children have suggested that group-based music activities are beneficial for prosocial outcomes and help...

Objective Adult cochlear implant (CI) candidates seeking to make an informed decision about cochlear implantation can find themselves needing to quickly understand large volumes of complex information provided by different professionals in different formats. This study investigates the suitability, within a health literacy context, of one of those...

Purpose A growing body of evidence suggests that long-term music training provides benefits to auditory abilities for typical-hearing adults and children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how music training may provide perceptual benefits (such as speech-in-noise, spectral resolution, and prosody) for children with hearing loss. Method Fo...

The primary aim of this current study was to compare the role, importance and value placed on music by families with normally hearing (NH) children, to those who had a child with a hearing loss (HL) who wore either hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. A secondary aim was to see whether this differed between the countries. Parents of children aged...

Objectives: The main aim of this study was to collect information on music listening and music appreciation from postlingually deafened adults who use hearing aids (HAs). It also sought to investigate whether there were any differences in music ratings from HA users with different levels of hearing loss (HL; mild, versus moderate to moderately-sev...

This study compares speech recognition outcomes before and after cochlear reimplantation surgery, in relation to clinical factors known before and at time of surgery. Between 2006 and 2015, 2,055 adult cochlear implant surgeries were conducted at this center, of which 87 were reimplantation surgeries (4.2%). Speech recognition scores (SRS) assessed...

Objective: The aims of this study were: to investigate the referral rates of postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant (CI) candidates from a hearing aid (HA) clinic for a CI candidacy assessment and to gain insight about factors influencing the referral pathways to CI assessments. Design: Two methodologies were used: a retrospective cohort...

Objectives: The Children Using Hearing Devices Quality of Life Questionnaire (CuHDQOL) is a new parent-administered hearing-specific questionnaire for children fitted with hearing devices. The aim of this study was to assess outcomes for hearing-impaired children in Singapore using this measure, as well as to examine its applicability for use in a...

Objective: To explore the music appreciation of prelingually deaf adults using cochlear implants (CIs). Design: Cohort study. Adult CI recipients were recruited based on hearing history and asked to complete the University of Canterbury Music Listening Questionnaire (UCMLQ) to assess each individual’s music listening and appreciation. Results were...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate whether experienced paediatric cochlear implant users could show benefits to speech perception outcomes from the introduction of noise reduction and automated scene classification technologies as implemented in the Nucleus(®) 6 sound processor. Previous research with adult cochlear implant users...

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of a music appreciation training program (MATP) to that of focused music listening (FML) for improving music and/or speech in noise perception for postlingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) recipients. It was hypothesized that the MATP would show greater improvements than FML. Ten CI recipien...

Objectives The purpose of this current study was to investigate whether pitch, lexical tone, and/or speech-in-noise perception were significantly correlated for Singaporean teenagers or adults who spoke both Mandarin and English. Methods Thirty-three normal hearing or near-normal hearing listeners who did not use a hearing device (NNH group), eight...

Cochlear implant (CI) recipients generally have good perception of speech in quiet environments but difficulty perceiving speech in noisy conditions, reduced sensitivity to speech prosody, and difficulty appreciating music. Auditory training has been proposed as a method of improving speech perception for CI recipients, and recent efforts have focu...

Background Currently, there is a paucity of data concerning the long-term outcomes, educational placement and quality of life of children implanted with hearing devices from large and representative samples of the population. To address this concern, a large, prospective, multicentre, multinational patient-outcomes registry for paediatric recipient...

Aim The aim of this study was to assess the music perception and appreciation of prelingually deafened adult cochlear implant (CI) users in comparison with postlingually deafened adult CI users. To date, there has been limited research available on the music perception of prelingually deafened CI recipients. Materials and Methods Eight (8) preling...

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in music perception of cochlear implant (CI) recipients and a growing body of research conducted in this area. The majority of these studies have examined perceptual accuracy for pitch, rhythm, and timbre. Another important, but less commonly studied aspect of music listening is appreciation, or a...

A clinically focused music training program was developed, aimed at enhancing a listener's music appreciation levels. The program was pilot tested on 18 adult cochlear implant (CI) recipients and 13 adult hearing aid (HA) users, with each device group divided into a control and training group. The training groups were asked to use the program four...

There were two aims to this study: to investigate the effect of a cochlear implant (CI) on quality-of-life (QOL) for adult recipients in New Zealand; and to determine which aspects of life that these changes are most noticed. There were two groups of participants: CI Group - 94 postlingually deafened adult CI recipients; and WL group - 70 postlingu...

The purpose of this study was to develop a music quality rating test battery (MQRTB) and pilot test it by comparing appraisal ratings from cochlear implant (CI) recipients using the fine-structure processing (FSP) and high-definition continuous interleaved sampling (HDCIS) speech processing strategies. The development of the MQRTB involved three st...

The present study compared the speech recognition and pitch ranking abilities of normally hearing children (n=15) to children using a cochlear implant (CI) alone (n=8), bilateral hearing aids (HAs) (n=6), or bimodal stimulation (BMS) (n=9). It was hypothesised that users of BMS would score higher on tasks of speech and pitch perception than childre...

The purpose of this study was firstly to elucidate the common emotional reactions to the diagnosis of hearing loss (HL) in adults, and secondly to evaluate current audiological counselling services and ascertain their impact on patients’ decisions to get hearing aids. Twenty-seven adults who had been newly-diagnosed with HL completed 2 questionnair...

The purpose of this study was firstly to elucidate the common emotional reactions to the diagnosis of hearing loss (HL) in adults, and secondly to evaluate current audiological counselling services and ascertain their impact on patients’ decisions to get hearing aids. Twenty-seven adults who had been newly-diagnosed with HL completed 2 questionnair...

The purpose of this study was firstly to elucidate the common emotional reactions to the diagnosis of hearing loss (HL) in adults, and secondly to evaluate current audiological counselling services and ascertain their impact on patients’ decisions to get hearing aids. Twenty-seven adults who had been newly-diagnosed with HL completed 2 questionnair...

Current research has shown that although adult cochlear implant (CI) users generally find music to be less enjoyable following implantation, training may help some recipients to improve their music perception. This study developed and administered a questionnaire (The University of Canterbury Music Listening Questionnaire: UCMLQ), to collect inform...

The purposes of this study were (1) to develop a new test of environmental sound perception, the Environmental Sounds Perception Test (EST), (2) to compare the performance of experienced cochlear implant (CI) recipients with that of age-equivalent normally hearing (NH) listeners using this new test, and (3) to pilot test its clinical use as a pre-t...

Developments in the field of cochlear implants (CIs) have expanded at an expeditious rate, particularly in the last two decades. As many CI recipients can now achieve highly satisfactory speech recognition performance, they are looking toward unproved perception of other aural stimuli, hence the expansion of research interests into non-speech stimu...

To investigate the music perception skills of adult cochlear implant (CI) users in comparison with hearing aid (HA) users who have similar levels of hearing impairment. It was hypothesized that the HA users would perform better than the CI recipients on tests involving pitch, instrument, and melody perception, but similarly for rhythm perception. F...

This study investigated the change in music perception of adults undergoing cochlear implantation. Nine adults scheduled for a cochlear implant (CI) were assessed on a music test battery both prior to implantation (whilst using hearing aids; HAs), and three months after activation of their CIs. The results were compared with data from a group of lo...

Introduction Most current adult cochlear implant (CI) users achieve higher open-set speech perception scores post- surgery than pre- surgery, a factor which greatly improves their overall quality of life. There is little published research assessing the ability of CI users to identify environmental sounds, an important skill which also impacts upon...

To develop & administer a questionnaire that collects unique information which would assist in the development of a training program for improving CI users’ music perception & appreciation.

This study aimed to compare the quality ratings by cochlear implant (CI) and hearing aid (HA) users in response to musical sounds. The ratings of 15 experienced adult Nucleus CI users (using the Advanced Combination Encoder (ACE) or Spectral Peak (SPEAK) strategy) were compared with those of 15 experienced adult HA users who met the audiological cr...

This study investigated the pitch discrimination and melody recognition abilities of cochlear implant (CI) users. Fifteen postlingually deafened users of the Nucleus cochlear implant were recruited for the study, along with nine normally hearing subjects. Two tests were conducted: (i) pitch ranking (utilising 1, 0.5, and 0.25 octave intervals), and...

Ten users of cochlear implants participated in two experiments investigating their ability to recognize complex sounds, including musical sounds, by hearing alone. Recognition scores varied widely, both across subjects and across sound types. For example, sounds including single speakers and instruments such as drums were identified correctly more...

The aims of the study reported in this article were to (i) investigate the levels of hearing impairment, activity limitations and participation restrictions in the residents of an aged care facility; (ii) assess the communication environment of the facility; and (iii) describe the implementation and outcomes of a holistic, communication-focused app...

This study aimed to identify a small set of melodies that were judged as most familiar by the Australian adult population. Responses were obtained from a questionnaire completed by 88 men and women (49 with normal hearing or mild hearing losses, 14 hearing-aid users and 25 cochlear implant users). The questionnaire listed 57 potentially familiar me...

Postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant (CI) users often find music to be less pleasant and less enjoyable postimplantation, and a music training program may help to enhance their appreciation of music. However existing studies do not provide detailed information from CI users on the factors which they feel contribute to their poorer ratings...

Singing Power Ratio (SPR) is the ratio between the highest intensity peak from the 2-4 KHz range and that from the 0-2 KHz range. The SPR analysis of human voice has been found useful for gauging a singer’s “formant tuning” technique, a technique useful for projecting voice over the orchestra sound energy, which is often found lower around the 3 kH...

Postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant (CI) users often find music to be less pleasant and less enjoyable postimplantation, and a music training program may help to enhance their appreciation of music. However existing studies do not provide detailed information from CI users on the factors which they feel contribute to their poorer ratings...