Speech Perception With High Cognitive Demand

NCT ID: NCT04698356

Last Updated: 2023-05-30

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 15 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2021-04-09
• Study Completion Date: 2021-07-31

Brief 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.

Conditions

Speech Intelligibility; Aging

Study Design

• Allocation Method: NA
• Intervention Model: SINGLE_GROUP
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Validation of auditory-cognitive training paradigm

In order to provide maximal speech-in-noise training benefit for older, normal-hearing adults, a validation of our new training materials is required. The investigators will evaluate the translated and adjusted sentences (based on the Nottingham UK PLUS training paradigm), 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 investigators can further optimize the sentences and procedures to be used during the training paradigm for older adults.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Auditory-cognitive training paradigm

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

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.

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 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 Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Age between 18-30 years
• Normal hearing (pure-tone thresholds <= 25 dB HL from 250-8000 Hz)
• Dominant language: American English
• Education: a high school diploma or higher educational level

Exclusion Criteria

• Middle-ear or inner ear pathology
• Non-native speaker of English
• Inability to complete all training sessions within a pre-specified time window (e.g., due to unexpected schedule restrictions)
• Learning disorders.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 30 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

National Institute on Aging (NIA)

NIH

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Maryland, College Park

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Joe Smith

Director - HRPP (L. Decruy is no longer at UMD)

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Samira B Anderson, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Maryland, College Park

Jonathan Z Simon, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Maryland, College Park

Stefanie E Kuchinsky, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

Locations

Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences

College Park, Maryland, United States

Countries

United States

Other Identifiers

P01AG055365

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: secondary_id

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P01AG055365

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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