Auditory Temporal Processes in Aging

NCT03468660 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: UMDCP
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 82
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Older people experience great difficulty understanding speech, especially accented English, and this problem is expected to increase with the influx of immigrants who provide services to the elderly population. The research examines the underlying factors that contribute to older listeners' difficulty understanding accented speech, including those associated with age-related hearing loss, changes in processing in auditory pathways in the brain, and general cognitive decline. The investigation also evaluates the efficacy of training strategies to improve understanding of accented English by older people. Outcomes of this research are expected to improve communication between senior citizens and those with whom they interact daily, and thereby improve quality of life for the older segment of the Nation's population.

Conditions

Auditory Perceptual Disorders; Aging Problems

Keywords

Accented speech perception

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Recognition of accented speech stimuli used for training

  Scale: Accented words (n = 160) and accented sentences (n = 35 sentences) used in training; construct: measures percent correct recognition; minimum score = 0%, maximum score = 100%. Higher values are considered a better outcome

  1 day

Secondary Outcomes (2)

• Generalization of benefit in recognizing accented speech

  1 day

• Retention of benefit in recognizing accented speech

  through study completion, an average of two weeks

Study Arms (3)

Experimental group

EXPERIMENTAL

Auditory training with feedback

Behavioral: Auditory training with feedback

Passive control group

NO INTERVENTION

Pre-post testing only; no training

Active Control group

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

Listening task with no feeback

Behavioral: Listening paradigm with no feedback

Interventions

Auditory training with feedback BEHAVIORAL

Experimental group receives phoneme-level and sentence-level training with feedback

Experimental group

Listening paradigm with no feedback BEHAVIORAL

Active controls listen to acoustic stimuli with no feedback

Active Control group

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years - 85 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• Age and hearing sensitivity:
• Younger listeners (18-40 years) with normal hearing;
• Older listeners (65-80 years) with normal hearing;
• Older listeners (65-80 years) with bilateral, mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss.
• High School Diploma,
• native speaker of English (based on self-report)
• normal middle-ear function (based on tympanometry)
• normal cognitive function (based on score on Montreal Cognitive Assessment)
• good-to-excellent word recognition scores (based on Northwestern University Test # 6 word recognition scores presented in quiet at suprathreshold levels).

You may not qualify if:

• non-native speaker of English,
• motor and/or speech disorders that prevent participant from providing a time-locked response,
• presence of middle ear disease or conductive hearing loss,
• presence of severe or profound hearing loss,
• presence of poor word recognition scores,
• cognitive impairment.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Maryland, College Park: lead

Study Sites (1)

University of Maryland

College Park, Maryland, 20742, United States

Location

Related Publications (11)

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Bieber RE, Jara Ureta DA, Freund MS, Fitzgibbons PJ. Effects of Listener Age and Native Language Experience on Recognition of Accented and Unaccented English Words. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2019 Apr 26;62(4S):1131-1143. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-H-ASCC7-18-0122.

  PMID: 31026190 BACKGROUND

• Bieber RE, Yeni-Komshian GH, Freund MS, Fitzgibbons PJ, Gordon-Salant S. Effects of listener age and native language on perception of accented and unaccented sentences. J Acoust Soc Am. 2018 Dec;144(6):3191. doi: 10.1121/1.5081711.

  PMID: 30599683 BACKGROUND

• Bieber RE, Gordon-Salant S. Adaptation to novel foreign-accented speech and retention of benefit following training: Influence of aging and hearing loss. J Acoust Soc Am. 2017 Apr;141(4):2800. doi: 10.1121/1.4980063.

  PMID: 28464671 RESULT

• Fitzgibbons PJ, Gordon-Salant S. Age effects in discrimination of intervals within accented tone sequences differing in accent type and sequence presentation rate. J Acoust Soc Am. 2016 Nov;140(5):3819. doi: 10.1121/1.4967512.

  PMID: 27908085 RESULT

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Pickett EJ, Fitzgibbons PJ. Perception of contrastive bi-syllabic lexical stress in unaccented and accented words by younger and older listeners. J Acoust Soc Am. 2016 Mar;139(3):1132-48. doi: 10.1121/1.4943557.

  PMID: 27036250 RESULT

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Fitzgibbons PJ, Cohen JI. Effects of age and hearing loss on recognition of unaccented and accented multisyllabic words. J Acoust Soc Am. 2015 Feb;137(2):884-97. doi: 10.1121/1.4906270.

  PMID: 25698021 RESULT

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Fitzgibbons PJ, Cohen JI, Waldroup C. Recognition of accented and unaccented speech in different maskers by younger and older listeners. J Acoust Soc Am. 2013 Jul;134(1):618-27. doi: 10.1121/1.4807817.

  PMID: 23862836 RESULT

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Fitzgibbons PJ. Recognition of accented English in quiet and noise by younger and older listeners. J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Nov;128(5):3152-60. doi: 10.1121/1.3495940.

  PMID: 21110610 RESULT

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Fitzgibbons PJ, Schurman J. Short-term adaptation to accented English by younger and older adults. J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Oct;128(4):EL200-4. doi: 10.1121/1.3486199.

  PMID: 20968326 RESULT

• Gordon-Salant S, Yeni-Komshian GH, Fitzgibbons PJ. Recognition of accented English in quiet by younger normal-hearing listeners and older listeners with normal-hearing and hearing loss. J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Jul;128(1):444-55. doi: 10.1121/1.3397409.

  PMID: 20649238 RESULT

• Fitzgibbons PJ, Gordon-Salant S. Age-related differences in discrimination of temporal intervals in accented tone sequences. Hear Res. 2010 Jun 1;264(1-2):41-7. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2009.11.008. Epub 2009 Dec 3.

  PMID: 19931608 RESULT

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Auditory Perceptual Disorders

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Auditory Diseases, Central; Retrocochlear Diseases; Ear Diseases; Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases; Brain Diseases; Central Nervous System Diseases; Nervous System Diseases; Perceptual Disorders; Neurobehavioral Manifestations; Neurologic Manifestations; Signs and Symptoms; Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms; Cognition Disorders; Neurocognitive Disorders; Mental Disorders

Study Officials

• Sandra Gordon-Salant, Ph.D.

  University of Maryland

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NON RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Professor

Model Details: Experimental group Active control group Passive control group

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: March 6, 2018
• First Posted: March 16, 2018
• Study Start: January 18, 2018
• Primary Completion: June 30, 2020
• Study Completion: June 30, 2020
• Last Updated: March 14, 2022

Record last verified: 2022-02

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

US (1)