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Speech Perception and High Cognitive Demand
Sponsor: University of Maryland, College Park
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 decreased hearing sensitivity. The goal of the "Speech Perception and High Cognitive Demand" project is to evaluate the benefit of a new auditory-cognitive training paradigm. In the present study neural (as measured by pupillometry and magnetoencephalography) and behavioral changes of speech-in-noise perception from pretest to posttest will be examined in older adults (age 65 - 85 years) assigned to one of three training groups: 1) Active Control Group: sessions of watching informational videos, 2) Auditory Training Group: sessions of auditory training listening to one of two speakers in everyday scenarios (e.g., driving directions) and needing to recall what one speaker said in the previous sentence, and 3) Auditory-cognitive training group: identical to the auditory training group, except participants will be asked to remember information from two previous sentences. Changes in speech-in-noise perception will be examined for the three groups of older adults and gains will be compared to a control group of young, normal hearing adults (18-30 years) that is not part of the clinical trial and will not undergo any training.
Official title: Auditory-cognitive Training Paradigm (NIH P01 Project - Speech Perception With High Cognitive Demand)
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
65 Years - 85 Years
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
100
Start Date
2021-09-27
Completion Date
2027-12-31
Last Updated
2025-04-08
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
Auditory-cognitive training paradigm
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 to train each individual at their own level to make the task challenging. A short-term memory component, in which listeners are asked to remember what a designated speaker said two sentences prior, was added to the auditory training paradigm to make the task more challenging. Participants will be asked to recall the keywords of the to-be-attended speaker. The sentences will be presented in a two-down one-up adaptive procedure in which the ratio of the levels of the to-be-attended and to-be-ignored speaker will be adjusted based on the correctly recalled key words.
Auditory training paradigm
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 to train each individual at their own level to make the task challenging. Participants will be asked to recall the keywords of the to-be-attended speaker. The sentences will be presented in a two-down one-up adaptive procedure in which the ratio of the levels of the to-be-attended and to-be-ignored speaker will be adjusted based on the correctly recalled key words.
Locations (2)
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences
College Park, Maryland, United States
Maryland Neuroimaging Center
College Park, Maryland, United States