The UA's Grunewald-Blitz Children's Speech and Hearing Clinic is the only clinic in the world evaluating the use of two new hearing aids in small children.

Nine-month-old Jesse Handzus is one of eight children being evaluated with a computer programmable hearing device called a PiC.

On the morning of June 14, Jesse, who wears a PiC, was being tested for hearing loss at the UA clinic.

The PiC is one of the two hearing aids being evaluated for young children by University of Arizona audiologists.

UA pediatric audiologist Ellen Goldman said the university received a grant to study the effects of the PiC on children from the Illnois-based company Phonak, the device's manufacturer.

Although the PiC has been available for a couple of years, this evaluation is unique, said James Dean, a clinical instructor of hearing and speech sciences. This marks the first time it is being tested for children.

The PiC device has three different channels, comparable to television channels. Dean said the device's channels can be selected by remote. The channels allow the users or their parents to adjust the device for different noise environments.

The ages of the children being tested range from infancy to two years old. Most are newly identified as having a mild to severe hearing loss and have no previous experience wearing hearing aids.

A digital aid produced by Oticon Inc., a corporation based in Copenhagen, Denmark, is also being evaluated, a UA press release said.

The digital aid, or DigiFocus, as it is called, differs from conventional aids by being fully automatic.

"You simply turn DigiFocus on in the morning and off at the end of the day," a brochure from Oticon said. "The fine tuning of DigiFocus is performed by means of a computer equipped with a special software program."

Once the DigiFocus is programmed in the clinic, the device will only need to be reprogrammed again if a child's hearing ability changes. In other words, the device has shown that it "can hold a program," Dean said.

"It (the DigiFocus) has the same capabilities as a 386 desktop computer," Dean said. The device digitally processes speech information.

Dean said the hearing aid is smart enough to keep sound at a comfortable level for a child in many different noise environments.

"DigiFocus features a unique, seven-band equalizer," the brochure states.

The equalizer allows audiologists to shape the amplified sound to meet the needs of children suffering from a hearing loss, Dean said.

The technology for digital hearing aids has been around since the early 1980s and was originally developed by Nicolet, a Wisconsin based company.

The problem, however, was size.

It was not until recently that the technology has gotten small enough to fit into a device weighing about four grams, Dean said.

According to the ReSound Corporation's homepage on the World Wide Web, "digital technology allows precision and miniaturization." ReSound is another corporation developing digital technology, though not involved in the research with the UA.

UA audiologists have been evaluating the DigiFocus since February on children approximately three to four years old who have previously used conventional aids, Dean said. The DigiFocus should be on the market in July.

Goldman said she estimates that the PiC and DigiFocus will cost two to three times more than a conventional hearing aid.

Dean and Goldman said these aids are not useful for completely deaf children. Dean said the hope is that the devices' flexibility will make them benefical to children with a hearing loss.