Development of Trivia Game for speech understanding in background noise

Abstract

Purpose: Listening in noise is an everyday activity and poses a challenge for many people. To improve the ability to understand speech in noise, a computerized auditory rehabilitation game was developed. In Trivia Game players are challenged to answer trivia questions spoken aloud. As players progress through the game, the level of background noise increases. A study using Trivia Game was conducted as a proof-of-concept investigation in healthy participants.

Method: College students with normal hearing were randomly assigned to a control (n = 13) or a treatment (n = 14) group. Treatment participants played Trivia Game 12 times over a 4-week period. All participants completed objective (auditory-only and audiovisual formats) and subjective listening in noise measures at baseline and 4 weeks later.

Result: There were no statistical differences between the groups at baseline. At post-test, the treatment group significantly improved their overall speech understanding in noise in the audiovisual condition and reported significant benefits in their functional listening abilities.

Conclusion: Playing Trivia Game improved speech understanding in noise in healthy listeners. Significant findings for the audiovisual condition suggest that participants improved face-reading abilities. Trivia Game may be a platform for investigating changes in speech understanding in individuals with sensory, linguistic and cognitive impairments.

Keywords::

• Auditory processing
• auditory comprehension
• adults

Declaration of interest: The researchers are collaborators in the development of Trivia Game and have a financial conflict of interest with A2T2, VRR, Inc. located in Clermont, FL.

This research was funded by a grant from the Office of the Secretary of Defense with a subproject to Old Dominion University (OSD-0082-H02-3163).