At-home Auditory Training Clinical Trial
Condition: Presbycusis; Aging; Hearing Loss
MeSH terms: Hearing Loss; Presbycusis
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an auditory training program
      used at home with the subject's own hearing aids.
    

Detailed description: 
      The most common communication complaint of older adults with impaired hearing is that they
      can hear speech, but can't understand it. This is especially true where there are competing
      sounds in the background. Previous experiments performed under laboratory settings using a
      novel word-based auditory-training regimen have demonstrated substantial improvements in
      open-set recognition of words and sentences in noise. The current proposed study will
      investigate the effectiveness of the training regimen when used in a patient's home setting
      with their own hearing aids. All testing for the screening, baseline speech testing, training
      system orientation, and the outcomes portions of this project will be conducted in the
      Audiology Research Laboratory (ARL) of the Speech and Hearing Center located at 200 South
      Jordan Avenue. The use of the training program will be done at the subject's home.

      Subjects will first come to the ARL for either one session for a hearing aid follow-up and
      instruction in the use of the training system (Session 1) or for one session for an initial
      screening to determine eligibility (Screening) followed then by Session 1. Subjects will then
      take home a training system that includes a tablet computer that has the training program
      loaded onto it, a portable loudspeaker, and some accessories. There will be three groups of
      subjects: (1) Hearing aid alone--no training (passive control); (2) Hearing aid plus auditory
      training (training); and (3) Hearing aid plus audio book use (active control). Total
      enrollment will be 45 subjects. Those subjects in the training group and active control group
      will complete a 6-week training period and return to the lab for outcome measures after 6
      weeks of training for the primary and secondary outcome measures. The hearing aid alone group
      will return for the same outcome measures as the training and active control groups, but will
      have no intervention between these follow-up sessions.
    

Intervention name(s): Auditory training program; Sham Comparator: Active Control
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Previous experiments performed under laboratory settings using a novel word-based auditory-training regimen have demonstrated substantial improvements in open-set recognition of words and sentences in noise. The current proposed study will investigate the effectiveness of the training regimen when used in a patient's home setting with their own hearing aids.; This is a sham intervention in which the patient listens to audio books following the same regimen as the patients receiving the auditory training.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Triple (Participant, Care Provider, Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Presbycusis; Aging; hearing aids; hearing training