Effects of Delay in Hearing Assistive Technology

April 15, 2026 updated by: Ryan Corey, University of Illinois at Chicago
Wireless assistive listening systems can dramatically improve intelligibility in noisy environments, but they are cumbersome to use. Digital consumer devices, such as smartphones, could be more accessible and user-friendly, but they suffer from transmission delays that could be disturbing to listeners. Delay has been studied extensively for in-ear devices such as hearing aids, but not for remote microphone systems. This study aims to characterize the tolerable delay for wireless remote microphones both for both the user's own speech and for external sounds. This will provide valuable information for engineers designing next-generation assistive listening systems.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

60

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

  • Name: Ryan M Corey, PhD
  • Phone Number: 312-996-8274
  • Email: corey1@uic.edu

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Illinois
      • Chicago, Illinois, United States, 60607
        • Science and Engineering Laboratory
        • Contact:

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Comfortable conversing in English

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Speech or hearing disorder

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Effects of Delay in Hearing Assistive Technology
Other: Audio delay
Audio will be captured by several microphones, processed to add an artificial delay, and then played back through headphones. The sound levels and delays for each microphone will be varied.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Subjective disturbance
Time Frame: Approximately 1 minute intervals
Participants will rate their level of annoyance on a numerical scale from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates no annoyance (the sound seems normal) and 7 is intolerable (it is difficult to communicate). Lower is better.
Approximately 1 minute intervals

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Illinois at Chicago

Collaborators

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

April 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

August 1, 2028

Study Completion (Estimated)

August 1, 2028

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 8, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 8, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

April 16, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

April 21, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 15, 2026

Last Verified

April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2024-0227
  • R21DC022643 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

YES

IPD Plan Description

De-identified response data from all experiments will be shared.

IPD Sharing Time Frame

Data will be shared alongside associated publications or no later than one year after the end of the study. The data will remain available indefinitely.

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

The data will be available publicly.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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