Lori Leibold, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Phone(919)-966-8546
Fax(919)-966-0100
Email:lori_leibold@med.unc.edu
http:// www.med.unc.edu/had

Education

• Postdoc. Boys Town National Research Hospital, 2004-2006
• Ph.D. University of Washington, 2004
• M.Sc. University of Western Ontario, 1997
• B.Sc. McMaster University, 1994

Personal Statement

My primary areas of interest are auditory development and psychoacoustics. The majority of our research is to develop a better understanding of the effects of background noise on hearing in children and adults. It has been well documented that infants and children are more susceptible to interference or from irrelevant competing sounds compared to adults. However, the mechanisms responsible for this increased susceptibility to auditory interference during development are poorly understood. In addition, experiments focus on the identification of cues that improve hearing for infants and children. Current research projects include:

• Studies examining age-related changes susceptibility to auditory masking.
• Studies examining children’s performance in degraded or uncertain listening conditions.
• Studies examining the acoustic cues that improve hearing in noise for infants and children.
• Studies examining the effects of hearing loss on children’s ability to hear in noisy backgrounds.
• Preliminary studies investigating the consequences of frequency-compression hearing aids on the ability to hear  speech in the presence of noise for children with hearing loss.

Courses Taught

• SPHS 811 Pediatric Audiology
• SPHS 701 Introduction to Research Methods

Research/Clinical Interests

• auditory development, psychoacoustics, pediatric audiology

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Leibold, L.J. & Werner, L.A. (2002). Relationship between intensity and reaction time in normal-hearing infants and adults. Ear and Hearing 23, 92-97.

Leibold, L.J. & Werner, L.A. (2006). Effect of masker-frequency variability on the detection performance of infants and adults. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119, 3960-3970.