Evaluating compliance on a gamified auditory training task in Veterans

Abstract

Service members and Veterans are regularly exposed to environmental factors that have been shown to contribute to hearing deficits. These listening deficits may present as auditory processing complaints such as difficulty listening in background noise in the absence of a peripheral hearing loss. The public app, Listen: An Auditory Training Experience, developed by University of California Riverside Brain Game Center, aims to improve overall speech comprehension by targeting skills related to spectro-temporal modulations, spatialized sound cues, and auditory memory tasks. Ten Veterans participated in a two-week gamified auditory training program. Compliance on the auditory training tasks was assessed by monitoring the number of trials accomplished each day, accuracy above chance, reaction time, and improvements in performance over time. Improvements were also monitored for untrained auditory tasks, such as speech-in-noise performance and a battery of central auditory processing assessments.