EFAS 2027: Programme

Vocal emotion recognition in child and adult users of hearing aids and cochlear implants

Voice provides rich information about a speaker, including their age, gender, physical characteristics, and emotional state, helping listeners interpret and adapt to communication. Perception of voice and vocal emotion involves complex mechanisms that develop over many years in children with typical hearing. Adult cochlear implant (CI) users experience difficulties not only with pitch perception but also with other voice cues, including those related to vocal tract length and those used to understand speech in multi-talker settings. Interestingly, early-implanted children with CIs appear better able to perceive and use some voice cues than adult CI users. However, vocal emotion recognition remains particularly challenging for both children and adults. To investigate this, we developed EmoHI, a game-like, child-friendly assessment tool. This talk will present an overview of our research aimed at characterizing vocal emotion recognition in children and adults with typical hearing, hearing aids, and CIs.

Biography

Deniz Başkent is Professor in the Audiology Group of the Otorhinolaryngology Department at University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Trained as a biomedical engineer, she studies the complexities of human communication and how they are affected by hearing loss, development, and aging. Her early research focused on improving speech perception with hearing devices through device-related factors, such as fitting and features, and user-related factors, including cognitive restoration of degraded speech. More recently, her research has expanded to voice perception, an important aspect of communication that is not yet routinely evaluated clinically. This work highlights benefits of hearing devices for communication that may not be captured by conventional speech audiometry.

Auditory wellness for all: Reimagining hearing care in the digital age

The global burden of unaddressed hearing loss calls for new approaches to designing and delivering hearing healthcare. This keynote explores innovative service-delivery models that prioritize access, affordability, and meaningful outcomes, framed by the concept of auditory wellness across the lifespan. Moving beyond traditional clinic-centered approaches, it considers how self-management and patient-centered models, supported by digital and virtual health technologies, can provide scalable and sustainable pathways that complement existing care. Examples of care models include (a) continuum of care, (b) integrated care, and (c) supplementary care. The talk also considers a shift from evidence-based to evidence-informed practice and integrated models spanning prevention, early identification, intervention, and long-term self-management. A central theme is translating research into real-world practice to create a more equitable, responsive, and future-ready hearing healthcare system. 

Biography

Vinaya Manchaiah, AuD, MBA, PhD, is Professor of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Director of Audiology at Northwestern Medicine, and Principal Investigator at the Virtual Hearing Lab. He also holds academic appointments at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. His research focuses on developing, evaluating, and implementing innovative hearing healthcare models that improve access, affordability, and outcomes, with particular emphasis on auditory wellness. His work advances self-management and patient-centered care through digital and virtual health technologies and supports translation of research into clinical practice. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and authored or edited six books on audiology, hearing science, and patient-centered care.

Bone-conduction devices: Current developments and future perspectives

Bone-conduction hearing devices have evolved from skin-applied transducers to percutaneous and, more recently, predominantly transcutaneous implant systems, alongside advances from electrodynamic to piezoelectric stimulation. While clinical applications have traditionally focused on monaural stimulation, growing evidence demonstrates benefits of bilateral bone-conduction stimulation for speech perception and spatial hearing. At the same time, emerging wearable devices using vibration near the ear raise fundamental questions about sound-transmission mechanisms, including the contributions of skull vibration, soft-tissue conduction, and air-conducted sound generated within the ear canal. These developments call for a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanical and auditory pathways involved in bone conduction. New objective methods for verifying device output, gain, and audibility may also enable more individualized fittings and provide a stronger basis for the clinical application of current and future bone-conduction technologies.

Biography

Stefan Stenfelt is Professor of Technical Audiology and Head of Applied Auditory Research and the Division of Sensory Organs and Communication at Linköping University, Sweden. A biomedical engineer by training, he received his PhD from Chalmers University of Technology in 1999 for work on the physiology of bone-conduction hearing. He subsequently spent several years at Stanford University investigating sound transmission through the ear and human skull. His research spans bone-conduction hearing, hearing physiology and diagnosis, hearing aids, and computational audiology. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as book chapters and numerous conference contributions.

SENSEcog care Australia: Hearing, vision, cognition and well-being among people in home and long-term care settings

Hearing and vision impairments are highly prevalent among older people receiving home or long-term care and frequently co-occur with cognitive impairment and dementia. When sensory impairments go unrecognized or untreated, they can exacerbate the effects of cognitive impairment, reduce independence, increase social isolation and anxiety, and place greater demands on caregivers. Working with older people, caregivers, aged-care providers, and hearing and vision professionals, we developed hearing and vision support interventions for home and long-term care settings. These include practical, integrated strategies such as care-worker training, environmental support, and improved access to hearing and vision devices, with the aim of improving quality of life, mental well-being, and functional independence while reducing social isolation. By combining clinical effectiveness with real-world applicability, SENSEcog seeks to develop scalable, cost-effective models for improving outcomes for older people and their carers.

Biography

Piers Dawes is Professor of Audiology and Director of the Centre for Hearing Research (CHEAR) at the University of Queensland and Professor of Audiology at the Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness (ManCAD), University of Manchester. His research focuses on the causes and impacts of hearing impairment in the context of multimorbidity in older age and on the development and evaluation of accessible and equitable hearing services. He was a US–UK Fulbright Scholar and received the British Society of Audiology’s TS Littler Prize for services to audiology. He has led major research programs on hearing, vision, cognition, and well-being, including the EU-funded SENSE-Cog project and Australian projects developing hearing and vision support for people receiving aged care.

Chairpersons:

• Waldo Nogueira (Barcelona/Hannover)
• Wiktor Jedrzejczak (Warsaw)

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Chairpersons:

• Pascale Sandmann (Oldenburg)
• Astrid van Wieringen (Leuven)

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• Sebastian Puschmann (Oldenburg)
• Nathalie Giroud (Zurich)
• Sam Denys (Leuven)
• Yael Henkin (Tel Aviv)

Chairpersons:

• Karolina Kluk-de kort (Manchester)
• Liat Kishon-Rabin (Tel Aviv)

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Chairpersons:

• Christof Stieger (Basle)
• Andro Košec (Zagreb)

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Chairpersons:

• Hannah Keppler (Ghent)
• Sophia Kramer (Amsterdam)

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Chairpersons:

• Gerard Encina Llamas (Barcelona)
• Mareike Buhl (Oldenburg)

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