Evaluation of home-delivered live-voice auditory training for adult hearing aid users involving their communication partners: a randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Objective

To examine the benefits of home-delivered auditory training for adult hearing aid users using live-voice conversations in the presence of a single-talker distractor (experimental group) or in quiet (active-control group).

Design

Randomised controlled trial. The experimental group held conversations with their nominated communication partner in the presence of a single-talker distractor set to a challenging level, 30 min/day, 5 days/week over 4 weeks. The active-control group held comparable conversations in quiet. Behavioural outcome measures of speech-in-noise perception, cognition and self-reported hearing difficulties were assessed pre- and post-training. Participant feedback was obtained.

Study sample

Thirty-nine hearing aid users (32 males, 7 females, mean age = 73.02 years, SD = 4.71 years) and their communication partners.

Results

The experimental group significantly improved and outperformed the active-control group for words-in-noise perception. Both groups achieved improvements in self-reported hearing difficulty while only the experimental group improved on dual-task. Subjectively, both groups found live-voice conversations beneficial and reported increased concentration and listening skills.

Conclusions

Home-delivered live-voice auditory training with communication partners shows potential to improve outcomes for adult hearing aid users, regardless of the presence or absence of a competing speech distractor. Further research is required to assess mechanisms of benefit and distractor effects within carefully controlled experiments.

Keywords:

• Auditory training
• speech perception
• cognition
• hearing aids

Acknowledgements

The researchers would like to thank the participants who gave up their time for this study and the North Wales Organisation for Randomised Trials in Health for their technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a British Society of Audiology Applied Research Grant. The trial was retrospectively registered with the ISRCTN registry on 8 January 2018 [ISRCTN31892374]. The independent contributions of HH and MF were funded in part by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre Funding Programme [BRC-1215-20003], and for HH additionally the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Programme [PB-PG-0816-20044] and NIHR Career Development Fellowship Award [CDF-2018-11-ST2-016].