Listening for their Future: The Complex Associations between Hearing, Cognition, Spoken Language, Literacy and Psychosocial Wellbeing in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Adolescents

ListenFuture is a nationwide, multidisciplinary consortium project that advances new knowledge about the complex relationships among listening, cognition, spoken language, literacy, and psychosocial wellbeing in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) adolescents. Using behavioral methods and questionnaires, we examine how DHH adolescents manage speech perception in noise, listening, and listening-related fatigue in today’s noisy environments. We also examine cognitive skills, executive functions, spoken language, and literacy to assess the current state of knowledge. Additionally, we study psychosocial wellbeing, school burnout, and related factors. By employing supervised and interpretable machine learning, we aim to identify the performance domains that could best predict outcomes of DHH adolescents. We anticipate that our project will have a significant societal impact on DHH adolescents, healthcare, schools and other stakeholders.