A Music Appreciation Training Program Developed for Clinical Application with Cochlear Implant Recipients and Hearing Aid Users

Abstract

A clinically focused music training program was developed, aimed at enhancing a listener's music appreciation levels. The program was pilot tested on 18 adult cochlear implant (CI) recipients and 13 adult hearing aid (HA) users, with each device group divided into a control and training group. The training groups were asked to use the program four times a week for 10 weeks. Both the training and control groups were assessed on their quality ratings of the musical stimuli as well as tests of instrument and style identification and pitch ranking, before and after the “training” period. In addition to examining the potential benefit of training on appreciation, we examined the relationship between appreciation and perceptual accuracy. The results showed that the training program improved CI recipients' quality ratings for ensemble stimuli, as well as both CI and HA users' subjective ratings of their music perception skills; however, there were no significant improvements for CI or HA users on the timbre identification or pitch ranking tasks. This suggests that CI recipients' music enjoyment can be improved with training, independent of perceptual accuracy. The pretraining baseline scores highlight that music appreciation and perception are two different issues, that everyday experience with the device does not improve music listening, and that music appreciation is still a significant issue for both CI and HA users.