At-home Auditory Training Clinical Trial

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).
Each group will include 40 subjects. Those subjects in the training group and active control
group will complete two five-week cycles of training and return to the lab for outcome
measures after 10 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.

Inclusion Criteria:

- •55-79 yrs of age

- Native English speaker

- Having corrected vision sufficient to read 18pt font on a computer screen

- Wearing binaural hearing aids that were fitted within the past 3 years that
are the only hearing aids the subject has ever worn

Exclusion Criteria:

- The hearing aids worn by the subject will be evaluated on the subject's ears and must
be functioning as required for this study; otherwise, the subject will be excluded
from participation until the hearing aids have been adjusted appropriately

- asymmetrical hearing loss

- presence of dementia, Parkinson's disease, or other neurological disorder