Auditory Brain Training to Enhance Satisfaction and Usage of New Hearing Aids by Older Adults

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Abstract Hearing loss is the third most common health condition for older adults in the US, and if untreated, may lead to social isolation, depression, cognitive decline, and fear of being home alone. Sadly, over 48% of seniors who purchase hearing aids cannot adjust to them well enough to use them daily and 31% report never using them. This is a tragic state of affairs, especailly since a National Council of Aging survey found that for particpants who did use hearing aids, over half of them reported improved relationships at home and better overall quality of life. The take-home message is that if seniors with hearing loss would only use amplification, their quality of life and ability to engage in daily activities would likely improve. The purpose of this SBIR Phase 1 is to evaluate the effectiveness of providing clEAR auditory brain training to older adults who are using hearing aids for the first time with the goals being to improve device satisfaction and increase everyday use time. Auditory brain training has been shown to enhance speech discrimination, reduce perceptual effort, and increase listening confidence in older adults. clEAR offers lesson plans for various training needs, including one for the adult who is adjusting to new hearing aids. The plan is specifically designed to enhance patient satisfaction with new hearing aids and to encourage device usage. The plan extends over 4 weeks and patients complete a total of 8 hours of gamified, web-based training. This lesson plan gradually acclimates the new hearing aid user to background noise and develops speech discrimination and speech recognition skills. Importantly, it presents exercises in which patients listen to speech in noise with their aid turned on and then off and in which they listen to female and child voices similarly. Thus, patients accelerate their adjustment to amplification, learn to maximally utilize their aided hearing, and experientially gauge benefit. Thirty adults who are 64 years or older, who have sensorineural hearing loss, and who have never used hearing aids will be enrolled. Half will be assigned to an “Early group” and receive clEAR auditory brain training after an adjustment period. The other half will be assigned to a “Late group” and receive training 4 weeks later. Both groups will also have a control condition, which will entail listening to audio books following a similar schedule as when using clEAR. On three occasions, participants will complete questionaires about satisfaction. Throughout, their devices will record use time. Statistical analyses will determine the effectiveness of clEAR for enhancing satisfaction and use time by comparing the performance of the Early and Late groups and by comparing results of the Late group that are collected before and after training. In a subsequent Phase 2, we will develop clEAR’s commercial potenital, with the goal being that older adults routinely receive clEAR as they adjust to new hearing aids.