Speech perception in noise is often a challenge for many cochlear implant (CI) users in everyday life. Therefore, a study tested how training of perception of speech in noise improved speech perception among people with cochlear implants. An article summarizing the results appears on the hear-it.org website.

Sentence-in-noise test

To assess the effect of training on speech perception in noise, a group of pre-lingually hearing impaired cochlear implant users with years of cochlear implant experience was compared with normal hearing young adults. All the participants followed single and multisession training using the same training protocol.

The participants in the study included 22 cochlear implant users with pre-lingual hearing loss and 30 people with normal hearing. A sentence-in-noise test was used for the training. All the participants took part in a single training session. Six people with normal hearing and seven people with cochlear implants continued training for four additional training sessions. All seven cochlear implant users trained for an additional five days, totaling 10 training sessions.

Improvements

Following the single-session training, the cochlear implant users showed “speech reception thresholds in noise” (SRTn) that were 9 to 10 dB higher (worse) than the normal hearing participants. After the five first days of training, five of seven cochlear implant users reduced this disadvantage by half. After 10 days of training, the cochlear implant participants improved in performance by 4.1 dB signal-noise-ratio (SNR).

According to the authors, the study is the first to demonstrate the course of learning and improvements in SRTn following training speech perception in noise in cochlear implant users with pre-lingual hearing loss.

Original Paper: Bugannim Y, Roth D, Zechoval D, Kishon-Rabin L. Training of speech perception in noise in pre-lingual hearing impaired adults with cochlear implants compared with normal hearing adults. Otology & Neurotology. 2019;40(3):e316–e325.

Source: hear-it.org, Otology & Neurotology