Efficacy of Auditory Training and Combined Auditory-working-memory Training in Improving Communication in Older Adults

Official title

Efficacy of Auditory Training and Combined Auditory-working-memory Training in Improving Communication and Cognition in Older Adults With Untreated Mild-to-moderate Sensorineural Hearing Impairment

Overview

Using a randomized controlled trial, we are going to examine whether a training program that incorporates both auditory training and working memory training (AT-WMT) would generate significantly better results in communication and cognition than an auditory training program and a mindfulness training program (active-control). Participants are 120 older adults (40 per group) with untreated mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing impairment .

Detailed description

There will be three training groups: the Auditory training (AT) group, the Auditory-working memory training (AT-WMT) group, and the control group (mindfulness training). All training programs are home-delivered, non-clinician-administered, and computer-based. That is, training will be self-paced and administered by the participants themselves at home using a computer. A software program (see Figure 2) has been created to facilitate the administration of the AT and AT-WMT. All training groups will spend one hour per day and five days per week for 4 weeks.

Before the training, two baseline test sessions (T1 and T2, a maximum of one week apart) will be used to account for the test-retest effects. The same measurements will be administered again one day (T3) and three months (T4) after completion of the training.

Interventions

• Behavioral Auditory-working memory training program
  The AT-WMT program is comprised of 1,200 daily used sentences either created or selected from newspapers, books, TV programs and magazines by the research assistants. The sentences are political-, cultural-, and religious-neutral sentences. Each of them contains 10 words. Noise was recorded from the upper and lower decks of a bus, in a café, a Chinese restaurant, an MTR (the Mass Transit Railway) carriage, and from a street. During the training, the following two adaptive tasks will be administ
• Behavioral Auditory training program
  During the training, an adaptive speech-in-noise perception task will be administered. Specifically, the sentences in a sentence set will be presented binaurally using a headphone at a level the listeners felt is comfortable. The trainees are expected to immediately repeat each noise-masked sentence after hearing it. If they cannot repeat the sentence, then the sound intensity of the noise will be automatically decreased (step size = 2 dB) until the sentence can be correctly repeated. If the sen
• Behavioral Mindfulness training program
  Participants in this group will participate in a mindfulness training program using newlife.330 (Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, 2018) which is a Cantonese online platform for self-guided mindfulness training.

Primary outcome measures

• The Cantonese version of the Hearing in Noise Test (CHINT) (Changes are being assessed) [Time frame: One week before the training, one day before the training, one day after the training, three months after the training]
• The Cantonese version of the reading span test (CRST) (Changes are being assessed) [Time frame: One week before the training, one day before the training, one day after the training, three months after the training]

Secondary outcome measures (3)

• The CogState Battery (Changes are being assessed) [Time frame: One week before the training, one day before the training, one day after the training, three months after the training]
• The Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing scale (SSQHS) (Changes are being assessed) [Time frame: One week before the training, one day before the training, one day after the training, three months after the training]
• Auditory Brainstem Responses to Complex Sounds (Changes are being assessed) [Time frame: One week before the training, one day before the training, one day after the training, three months after the training]

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria

• Native Cantonese speakers and having been living in Hong Kong for at least 20 years.
• Aged between 55 and 80 years.
• Normal cognitive function, as screened with the Hong Kong version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (HK-MoCA) with a cutoff of 18/19.
• Mild-to-moderate sensorineural HI, in which the four-frequency pure-tone average at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz of the better ear is between 26 and 55 dB HL.

Exclusion criteria

• Outer or middle ear pathologies.
• Wearing hearing aids or cochlear implants.
• No computers and internet access at home.

Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.

Healthy volunteers: No

Study design

Allocation

Randomized

Model

Parallel assignment

Masking

Quadruple blind

Primary purpose

Treatment

Study locations

Center list to be confirmed — check the primary protocol.

Publications

• Wong LL, Soli SD. Development of the Cantonese Hearing In Noise Test (CHINT). Ear Hear. 2005 Jun;26(3):276-89. doi: 10.1097/00003446-200506000-00004. PMID 15937409
• Anderson S, Parbery-Clark A, Yi HG, Kraus N. A neural basis of speech-in-noise perception in older adults. Ear Hear. 2011 Nov-Dec;32(6):750-7. doi: 10.1097/AUD.0b013e31822229d3. PMID 21730859
• Anderson S, Kraus N. Sensory-cognitive interaction in the neural encoding of speech in noise: a review. J Am Acad Audiol. 2010 Oct;21(9):575-85. doi: 10.3766/jaaa.21.9.3. PMID 21241645
• Carroll R, Meis M, Schulte M, Vormann M, Kiessling J, Meister H. Development of a German reading span test with dual task design for application in cognitive hearing research. Int J Audiol. 2015 Feb;54(2):136-41. doi: 10.3109/14992027.2014.952458. Epub 2014 Sep 8. PMID 25195607
• Zhong N, Jiang H, Wu J, Chen H, Lin S, Zhao Y, Du J, Ma X, Chen C, Gao C, Hashimoto K, Zhao M. Reliability and validity of the CogState battery Chinese language version in schizophrenia. PLoS One. 2013 Sep 2;8(9):e74258. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0074258. eCollection 2013. PMID 24023931
• Gatehouse S, Noble W. The Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ). Int J Audiol. 2004 Feb;43(2):85-99. doi: 10.1080/14992020400050014. PMID 15035561

Identifiers

NCT: NCT05399264 · 2021-2022-0134

Primary sources (government registries)

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US NIH)

View this study on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗