Our January speaker for our monthly HLAA-TC chapter meeting (held on Zoom on Saturday, January 16th at 9:30 am) is Dr. Matthew Winn, Director, Listen Lab, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota. Dr. Winn was scheduled to speak at our October 2020 “Live Well With Hearing Loss” Conference before it was canceled.

Dr. Winn published an article in the recent January HLAA-TC newsletter entitled “The invisible problem of listening effort” and when he speaks at our meeting he would like to field any questions or comments readers have about the article. He can also be reached via email with additional questions. His email is: MWinn@umn.edu

Dr. Winn was also the featured speaker for our September 2019 monthly meeting. His talk then was entitled “Listening effort: ways that it affects your life and how it is measured.” The Listen Lab that Dr. Winn directs heads research in speech communication in relation to hearing loss. The main focus of the lab is to raise awareness of the extra effort (or “listening effort”) that hearing loss causes. The lab measures changes in pupil dilation as a person listens to speech to understand when they are exerting effort, how well they grasp the meaning of sentences, and the time they spend pondering what they just heard. They specialize in cochlear implants, but extend the knowledge to anyone who has hearing loss.

The Listen Lab has also asked us to share a research study that Dr. Amy Greminger through the University of Minnesota Medical School in Duluth is conducting. It’s about the disparities in health care for Deaf and HoH patients. Please fill out the survey by clicking here.

We look forward to Dr. Winn’s talk on the 16th and hope you can join us. Please email Lionel at treasurer@hlaatc.org in order to receive a link for the January 16th Zoom meeting. Like most meetings social time starts at 9:30 am and Dr. Winn begins his talk at 10:00 am.

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