Speech Perception With High Cognitive Demand
Condition: Speech Intelligibility; Aging
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      With advancing age, adults experience increasing speech understanding difficulties in
      challenging situations. Currently, speech-in-noise difficulties are rehabilitated by
      providing hearing aids. For older normal-hearing adults, however, hearing devices do not
      provide much benefit since these adults do not have a decreased hearing sensitivity. The goal
      of the "Speech Perception with High Cognitive Demand" Project is to evaluate the benefit of a
      new auditory-cognitive training paradigm. In order to provide maximal benefit for older,
      normal-hearing adults, a validation of the new training materials is required. In a pilot
      study, the investigators will evaluate the new auditory-cognitive training paradigm in 15
      young, normal-hearing adults (18-30 years). Based on these results, the training paradigm can
      be further optimized for older adults.
    

Detailed description: 
      With advancing age, adults experience increasing speech understanding difficulties in
      challenging situations, such as difficulty with understanding other persons in a noisy
      restaurant. Speech-in-noise difficulties are typically rehabilitated by providing hearing
      aids. For older normal-hearing adults, however, hearing devices do not provide much benefit
      since these adults do not have a decreased hearing sensitivity. For these adults
      communication difficulties persist in everyday life situations and can even lead to social
      withdrawal, isolation, and depression.

      A growing body of studies demonstrates that combined auditory-cognitive training paradigms
      can offer speech-in-noise benefits to adults with hearing loss that could prevent the
      consequences listed above (Ferguson & Henshaw, 2015; Lawrence et al., 2018). The goal of the
      "Speech Perception with High Cognitive Demand" Project is to evaluate the benefit of a new
      auditory-cognitive training paradigm for older normal-hearing adults. The investigators
      developed an American English version of the Nottingham (UK) PLUS training paradigm in which
      listeners are asked to focus and listen to one speaker while ignoring another speaker.
      Although it cannot ensured that every participant will experience direct significant benefit
      from the training, the paradigm is being designed to optimally enhance the possibility of
      benefit: an adaptive procedure is employed in order to train each individual at their own
      level and to make the task challenging, and a short-term memory component is added to the
      original training paradigm to also enhance the cognitive skills of the participants. In
      addition, the training is implemented on tablets rather than computers, making at-home
      training possible (many older adults are more comfortable with tablets than laptops). This
      way, not only the risk of COVID-19 for participants is minimized, but training is also
      provided in a realistic setting which will ensure a better transfer of the trained skills to
      daily communication situations.

      In order to provide maximal benefit for older, normal-hearing adults, a validation of the new
      training materials is however required, and the initial validation will be for younger adults
      only. The investigators will evaluate the translated and adjusted sentences (from UK to
      American English), the adaptive procedure, and the short-term memory component, in young,
      normal-hearing adults (18-30 years). Based on the results of this pilot study, the sentences
      and procedures of the training paradigm can be further optimized for older adults.
    

Intervention name(s): Auditory-cognitive training paradigm
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): The investigators developed an American English version of the Nottingham (UK) PLUS training paradigm in which listeners are asked to focus and listen to one speaker while ignoring another speaker. The paradigm is designed to optimally enhance the possibility of benefit: an adaptive procedure is employed in order to train each individual at their own level and to make the task challenging. A short-term memory component was also added to the original training paradigm, to enhance the cognitive skills of our participants. To provide maximal speech-in-noise benefit for older, normal-hearing adults, a validation of our new training materials is required. The investigators will evaluate this in young, normal-hearing adults (18-30 years) by studying our outcome measure (speech reception threshold) for the different sentence-scenarios and test-retest sessions.
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Auditory-cognitive training; Aging; Speech-in-noise perception