Background: Implementation issues often hinder reaching the potential of care technology to improve daily lives of people with intellectual disabilities. We investigated barriers to and facilitators of implementing different technology modalities (app/social robot/sensor/domotics) in long-term care. Method: Care professionals (N = 83) from 12…

Background: Gaining insight into sleep-wake patterns of persons with intellectual disabilities is commonly done using wrist actigraphy. For some people, contactless alternatives are needed. This study compares a contactless bed sensor with wrist actigraphy to monitor sleep-wake patterns of people with moderate to profound intellectual…

Purpose: This study aimed to gain more insight into the primary auditory abilities of children with significant residual hearing in order to improve decision making when choosing between bimodal fitting or sequential bilateral cochlear implantation. Method: Sound localization abilities, spatial release of masking, and fundamental frequency…

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of speech recognition performance, working memory capacity (WMC), and a noise reduction algorithm (NRA) on listening effort as measured with pupillometry in cochlear implant (CI) users while listening to speech in noise. Method: Speech recognition and pupil responses (peak dilation, peak latency,…

Background: New technology may stimulate active leisure activities for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). We conducted a study of an interactive ball that responded to gross body movement, focus of attention, and vocalisations of users with PIMD. The aim was to increase alertness and body movement and elicit more…

Children with hearing loss (HL) are at risk for a lower educational achievement. This longitudinal study compared the school career of a nationwide Dutch cohort with and without HL based on descriptive data of the governmental authority Statistics Netherlands. From 2008 to 2018, 3,367,129 children, of whom 1,193 used cochlear implants (CIs) and…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to evaluate the application of a modified version of the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disabilities and Handicap to inventory self-reported hearing difficulties pre and post hearing aid fitting in 6 dimensions: detection, speech in silence, speech in noise, localization, discrimination, and noise tolerance.…

Background: New technologies could broaden activities for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). This study compared watching television with a newly-developed interactive ball. Method: The ball responded with sounds, lights, and wiggling to the player's voice and movements. Five control sessions (watching television)…

Purpose: Relative to normally hearing (NH) peers, the speech of children with cochlear implants (CIs) has been found to have deviations such as a high fundamental frequency, elevated jitter and shimmer, and inadequate intonation. However, two important dimensions of prosody (temporal and spectral) have not been systematically investigated. Given…

The purpose of this paper was to analyse the core of the quality of life, intended as a complex construct with specific and transversal features. The approach to this issue, by linking it to the great emergency of disability in adulthood, pushes the analysis into deep conceptual pedagogical reflections, which lead the authors' initial reflections…

Background: The spoken language difficulties of children with moderate or severe to profound hearing loss are mainly related to limited auditory speech perception. However, degraded or filtered auditory input as evidenced in children with cochlear implants (CIs) may result in less efficient or slower language processing as well. To provide insight…

Purpose: We describe the natural auditory environment of people with cochlear implants (CIs), how it changes across the life span, and how it varies between individuals. Method: We performed a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of Cochlear Nucleus 6 CI sound-processor data logs. The logs were obtained from 1,501 people with CIs (ages 0-96…

An increasing number of deaf children with additional disabilities receive a cochlear implant (CI). International studies on cochlear implantation in deaf children with additional disabilities show less and slower speech and language gains, but improvement in overall quality of life. In order to qualify the concept of quality of life this study…

Although physical fitness is relevant for well-being and health, knowledge on the feasibility of instruments to measure physical fitness in older adults with intellectual disability (ID) is lacking. As part of the study Healthy Ageing with Intellectual Disabilities with 1,050 older clients with ID in three Dutch care services, the feasibility of 8…

The purpose of this research was to evaluate a prototype of an automatic speech recognition (ASR)-based language learning system that provides feedback on different aspects of speaking performance (pronunciation, morphology and syntax) to students of Dutch as a second language. We carried out usability reviews, expert reviews and user tests to…