Starkey Laboratories Inc., one of the world’s leading hearing technology companies, announced that Jason Galster, Ph.D., CCC-A, received the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA) Editors’ Award for the most outstanding article of the year for 2007 in conjunction with a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University. Galster, a member of Starkey’s Education and Training department, was the second author on the article titled, “Directional Benefit in Simulated Classroom Environments.” Published in The American Journal of Audiology, the article was selected based on a number of criteria including experimental design, educational value, scientific or clinical merit, contribution to the profession and theoretical impact.
“The paper, authored by Drs. Todd Ricketts, Jason Galster and Anne Marie Tharpe, outlines research examining speech recognition performance and subjective ratings for directional and omnidirectional microphone modes in simulated classroom environments with kids ages 10 to 17,” the release said. “The study found that directional hearing aids can be useful in some noisy school environments, while the directional function should be limited to situations where the talkers that the students need to hear are in front of them. The results highlight the importance of switching between microphone modes in the school-age population.”