Research areas

The sections below describe the research interests that ORCA Europe has focused on in the past, as well as the ongoing activities that we are currently involved in. Please find more information about each research area by clicking the link "Read more" below each research area.

Auditory ecology

Auditory ecology refers to the acoustical environments that a person experiences and the auditory demands that a person has in these environments. Understanding auditory ecology is important both when developing hearing devices and when designing ecologically valid laboratory tests.

Test and verification methods

Sensitive, reliable, and valid test and verification methods are an essential part of high-quality auditory research. Revision of existing methods and development of new methods is therefore an important part of our work.

Hearing-aid
prescription

Hearing-aid prescriptions are calculations based on, for example, measured hearing-threshold levels. Hearing-threshold levels are then used when deriving hearing-aid settings when fitting the individual. The suggested settings need to be appropriate so that the sound quality and speech intelligibility is acceptable for the individual hearing-aid end-user.

Noise reduction and hearing aids

Understanding speech in background noise is one of the most common challenges for people with hearing loss. Therefore, is it important to develop test methods that can be used to evaluate and quantify the performance and benefit of different hearing-aid noise reduction systems.

Severe-profound hearing loss

The group of people with severe or profound hearing loss is relatively small compared to the group of people with mild-moderate hearing loss. Nonetheless, severe or profound hearing loss is often characterized by particular difficulties which must be considered in hearing-aid fitting.

Other

Audiological research covers a wide range of domains, and ORCA Europe has participated in studies beyond our core focus areas. For example, hearing-aid fitting on specific age groups or specific types of hearing loss have both been of interest.