Abstract
Background: Regarding the strong auditory spatial plasticity capability of the central auditory system and the effect of short-term and long-term rehabilitation programs in elderly people, it seems that an auditory spatial training can help this population in informational masking release and better track speech in noisy environments. The main purposes of this study are developing an informational masking measurement test and an auditory spatial training program. Protocol: This study will be conducted in two parts. Part 1: develop and determine the validity of an informational masking measurement test by recruiting two groups of young (n=50) and old (n=50) participants with normal hearing who have no difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments. Part 2 (clinical trial): two groups of 60-75-year-olds with normal hearing, who complain about difficulty in speech perception in noisy environments, will participate as control and intervention groups to examine the effect of auditory spatial training. Intervention: 15 sessions of auditory spatial training. The informational masking measurement test and Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale will be compared before intervention, immediately after intervention, and five weeks after intervention between the two groups. Discussion: Since auditory training programs do not deal with informational masking release, an auditory spatial training will be designed, aiming to improve hearing in noisy environments for elderly populations. Trial registration: Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials ( IRCT20190118042404N1) on 25 th February 2019.
Highlights
Some references have added and the order of some paragraphs have changed, according to the reviewer 2 comments
Assessments after auditory spatial training The informational masking test will be done immediately after training and five weeks after that using the Persian list of the coordinate response measure (CRM) corpus, which will be compared with the pre-training results
Since informational masking has an important role in competing signal environments and rehabilitation programs have not considered this an important aspect of masking, designing training that can help elderly people in releasing this masking is novel
Summary
The sample size of the second part of study have changed, according to the reviewer 2 comments. 5. Ethical statement: some sentences have added to this part, according to the reviewer 2 comments. 6. We just have revised the consent forms terminology according to the reviewer comments, and uploaded the new forms to OSF
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