From Children to Adults: How Binaural Cues and Ear Canal Impedances Grow

In this thesis the growth-dependency of head-related transfer functions and their resulting parameters (interaural time and level differences) are analyzed as well as ear canal
impedances. Differences in the anatomy of children and adults result in different binaural cues. The individual anthropometric parameters, however, affect the binaural cues to a varying
extent. In this thesis the most important anthropometric parameter with regard to their influence on binaural cues, are determined. Ear canal impedances are undergoing certain changes as well while children are growing up and finally reach adulthood. This thesis presents for the first time, the age-related development of data that is most decisive for the impedances.
These new findings open up new possibilities to develop artificial child heads and couplers for hearing aids that are suitable for children. Thus, improvements in certain fields of
applications such as the development and fitting of hearing aids for children are now possible and measurement techniques that are used for classroom acoustics can now be optimized significantly as well. Moreover, these new findings are vital when it comes to re-evaluating standardized artificial heads.