Response of hearing‐impaired adults to a structured program of auditory training

Abstract

Twenty adults with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairments were given three tests of auditory perception: The CUNY Nonsense Syllable Test (NST), the low predictability items of the Speech in Noise (SPIN) test, and the high predictability items of the SPIN test. The tests were administered at a signal‐to‐noise ratio giving a score of approximately 50%, as determined with an adaptive procedure at the beginning of the study. They were tested on four occasions: (1) at the beginning of the study, (2) after one month of “no treatment,” (3) after a month of intensive auditory training, and (4) after a further month of “no treatment.” During the treatment period, ten of the subjects spent all of the time on global tasks (i.e., activities involving sentence perception and perceptual strategy) while the other 10 spent part of the time on analytic tasks (i.e., activities involving consonant recognition). The results showed: (a) that performance improved only during the treatment period, and (b) that the i...