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Auditory Perceptual DisordersNCT03468660

Auditory Temporal Processes in Aging

A study testing Auditory training with feedback and Listening paradigm with no feedback in people with Auditory Perceptual Disorders and Aging Problems, run by University of Maryland, College Park at 1 site in United States.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
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Trial 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. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 18 to 85 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
Conditions the study is for
Auditory Perceptual Disorders, Aging Problems
What is being tested?
Auditory training with feedback and Listening paradigm with no feedback
Could I receive a placebo?
No, everyone receives an active treatment
How many people
82 participants
Where
1 siteUnited States
Study dates
18 Jan 2018to 30 Jun 2020
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
None posted in the registry

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 18 to 85 years
  • All sexes
  • Healthy volunteers accepted
  • Adult, Older adult

Who may be able to join

  • 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)
Show all 9Show fewer
  • 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).

Who cannot join

  • 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.

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

United States1 site
  • University of Maryland

    College Park, Maryland, 20742

Other trials in United States

About this study

Official title: Auditory Temporal Processes, Speech Perception and Aging

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.

Read the detailed description

This research program in speech perception and auditory psychophysics examines the hypothesis that many of the predominant difficulties in speech understanding of elderly listeners are related to underlying problems in auditory temporal processing. One form of degraded speech that is particularly difficult for elderly listeners to perceive is accented English. Alterations of speech stress and timing with accent may be viewed as a form of degradation in temporal aspects of speech prosody, and this type of temporal distortion is the focus of investigation in the next project period. Moreover, psychoacoustic results demonstrate that large age-related difficulties in temporal processing exist for the perception of auditory tempo and rhythmic characteristics of sequential stimulus patterns featuring a stressed tone. Listener processing difficulty could be attributed to peripheral and/or central processing mechanisms, as well as various cognitive factors, including the degree of familiarity with prosodic features of different native languages. The project examines the relative contribution of peripheral hearing impairment, type of stimulus temporal complexity and cognitive demand, and the linguistic background experience of listeners on the processing of temporal prosody cues in speech and non-speech stimulus patterns. The project associated with this clinical trial examines the efficacy of auditory training paradigms with stimuli that feature temporal contrasts for improving perception of accented English and non-speech sequences by older people. The research described in this application seeks to address one goal outlined by the National Institute on Aging: to develop effective interventions to maintain health and function and prevent or reduce the burden of age-related diseases, disorders, and disabilities. The approach in this research program involves (a) an assessment of the problems encountered in daily activities by the elderly population, (b) an analysis of specific task demands in relation to individual capabilities, and (c) basic research on sensory and perceptual changes with age and on the ameliorating effects of emerging technologies (including rehabilitation). This three-dimensional approach is expected to further progress toward improving communication and health-related quality of life for senior citizens.

Being tested
Auditory training with feedback, Listening paradigm with no feedback
Keywords
Accented speech perception
Medical subject headings
Auditory Perceptual Disorders

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • Auditory training with feedbackBehavioural

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

  • Listening paradigm with no feedbackBehavioural

    Active controls listen to acoustic stimuli with no feedback

Study groups in NCT03468660
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
Experimental groupExperimentalAuditory training with feedback
Receives: Behavioral: Auditory training with feedback
Passive control groupNo interventionPre-post testing only; no training
Active Control groupActive comparatorListening task with no feeback
Receives: Behavioral: Listening paradigm with no feedback

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  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

    Measured: 1 day

Secondary outcomes (2)
  1. Generalization of benefit in recognizing accented speech

    Scale: Accented words (n = 48) and accented sentences (n = 10 sentences) with new talker and speech stimuli not used in training. Construct measures percent correct recognition score for accented words and sentences not used in training, with minimum = 0% and maximum = 100%. Better performance is a higher percent correct score.

    Measured: 1 day

  2. Retention of benefit in recognizing accented speech

    Scale: Accented words (n = 64) and accented sentences (n = 90). For words: familiar words and familiar talkers (n = 32) and new talkers and new words (n = 32). For sentences: familiar talkers and words (used in training; n = 40), new talkers and new lists not heard before (n = 20), and talkers and sentences heard before but not used in training (n = 30). Construct: percent correct recognition for trained talker and lists, new talkers and new stimuli, and familiar talkers and lists not used in training. Construct: percent correct recognition (min = 0%, max = 100%), with better performance a higher recognition score.

    Measured: through study completion, an average of two weeks

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted16 Mar 2018
  2. Study start18 Jan 2018
  3. Primary completion30 Jun 2020
  4. Study completion30 Jun 2020

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Health services research
Allocation
Non-randomised
Intervention model
Parallel groups
Model description
Experimental group Active control group Passive control group
Masking
None (open label)
Enrolment
82 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT03468660
Sponsor's protocol ID
UMDCP
Status last verified
Feb 2022
First submitted
6 Mar 2018
Last updated
14 Mar 2022
Results posted
No
Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
Individual data sharing
No

Publications

  • 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.

    PubMed 31026190
  • 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.

    PubMed 30599683
  • 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.

    PubMed 28464671
  • 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.

    PubMed 27908085
  • 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.

    PubMed 27036250
  • 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.

    PubMed 25698021
  • 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.

    PubMed 23862836
  • 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.

    PubMed 21110610
  • 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.

    PubMed 20968326
  • 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.

    PubMed 20649238
  • 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.

    PubMed 19931608

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing Auditory training with feedback and Listening paradigm with no feedback in people with Auditory Perceptual Disorders and Aging Problems, run by University of Maryland, College Park at 1 site in United States.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 9 inclusion and 6 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 14 Mar 2022. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

Recognition of accented speech stimuli used for training (time frame: 1 day). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT03468660, which also lists 11 linked publications.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 14 Mar 2022.

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