Abstract
This study aimed to examine the efficacy and maintenance of short-term (one-session) gated audiovisual speech training for improving auditory sentence identification in noise in experienced elderly hearing-aid users. Twenty-five hearing aid users (16 men and 9 women), with an average age of 70.8 years, were randomly divided into an experimental (audiovisual training, n = 14) and a control (auditory training, n = 11) group. Participants underwent gated speech identification tasks comprising Swedish consonants and words presented at 65 dB sound pressure level with a 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (steady-state broadband noise), in audiovisual or auditory-only training conditions. The Hearing-in-Noise Test was employed to measure participants’ auditory sentence identification in noise before the training (pre-test), promptly after training (post-test), and 1 month after training (one-month follow-up). The results showed that audiovisual training improved auditory sentence identification in noise promptly after the training (post-test vs. pre-test scores); furthermore, this improvement was maintained 1 month after the training (one-month follow-up vs. pre-test scores). Such improvement was not observed in the control group, neither promptly after the training nor at the one-month follow-up. However, no significant between-groups difference nor an interaction between groups and session was observed. Conclusion: Audiovisual training may be considered in aural rehabilitation of hearing aid users to improve listening capabilities in noisy conditions. However, the lack of a significant between-groups effect (audiovisual vs. auditory) or an interaction between group and session calls for further research.
Highlights
Age-related hearing loss (Presbycusis) is one of the most common disorders in elderly people, and hearing loss prevalence is growing because of an aging population (Lin et al, 2011; World Health Organization, 2012)
The mean HINT scores in audiovisual and auditory training groups were 1.85 dB SNR (SD = 2.54) and 0.44 dB SNR (SD = 1.96), respectively, which means that the audiovisual training group had about 1.5 dB higher SNR in HINT than the auditory training group
The findings of the present study extend our previous studies in elderly hearing-aid users, by showing that prior exposure to gated audiovisual speech identification tasks subsequently improves auditory sentence identification in noise ability
Summary
Age-related hearing loss (Presbycusis) is one of the most common disorders in elderly people, and hearing loss prevalence is growing because of an aging population (Lin et al, 2011; World Health Organization, 2012). The most common method to compensate for the speech perception difficulties of sensorineural hearing-impaired listeners is to prescribe hearing aids. Independent studies have shown that the amplification of sounds alone cannot fully restore difficulties in the auditory perception of speech stimuli in people with hearing loss (Dimitrijevic et al, 2004; Ahlstrom et al, 2014; Moradi et al, unpublished). People with hearing loss need other methods of rehabilitation, in addition to hearing aids, to compensate more fully for their difficulties in perceiving speech stimuli
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