[Improvement in Phoneme Discrimination in Noise in Normal Hearing Adults]

The effect of phoneme-based auditory training on speech intelligibility in hearing-aid users

OBJECTIVE

Hearing loss commonly causes difficulties in understanding speech in the presence of background noise. The benefits of hearing-aids in terms of speech intelligibility in challenging listening scenarios remain limited. The present study investigated if phoneme-in-noise discrimination training improves phoneme identification and sentence intelligibility in noise in hearing-aid users.

DESIGN

Two groups of participants received either a two-week training program or a control intervention. Three phoneme categories were trained: onset consonants (C1), vowels (V) and post-vowel consonants (C2) in C1-V-C2-/i/ logatomes from the Danish nonsense word corpus (DANOK). Phoneme identification test and hearing in noise test (HINT) were administered before and after the respective interventions and, for the training group only, after three months.

STUDY SAMPLE

Twenty 63-to-79 years old individuals with a mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss and at least one year of experience using hearing-aids.

RESULTS

The training provided an improvement in phoneme identification scores for vowels and post-vowel consonants, which was retained over three months. No significant performance improvement in HINT was found.

CONCLUSION

The study demonstrates that the training induced a robust refinement of auditory perception at a phoneme level but provides no evidence for the generalisation to an untrained sentence intelligibility task.

[Auditory group therapy in adult cochlear implant rehabilitation]

BACKGROUND

Auditory training is an established intervention in adult cochlear implant (CI) aural rehabilitation. In most cases, training is implemented in an individual therapy setting. Increasing patient numbers and the associated time-economic and cost-related demands as well as psychosocial and communicative aspects support the use of aural group interventions.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed 1) to describe concepts and contents of group interventions for adult CI users and 2) to present results of a questionnaire-based evaluation.

METHODS

Group interventions have been offered at the CI Centre Erlangen CICERO for several years. In Auditory Training Groups, exercises have priority, while Thematic Group Workshops focus on psychosocial aspects and provide information for the participants. The Auditory Training Groups were evaluated based on a patient questionnaire. Additionally, the reliability of the questionnaire was analyzed.

RESULTS

The median overall satisfaction of CI users participating in Auditory Training Groups was rated as good. Training of speech perception in noise as well as communicative exchange are of great importance for CI users. They rated the therapeutic design as very good to good. Reliability analysis showed significant positive intercorrelations of the questionnaire items.

CONCLUSION

Group interventions are well accepted by CI users and represent a useful complement to individual therapy during the rehabilitation process. As group interventions place special demands on patients and therapists, structured and well-proven concepts should be used in practice.