How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening

Auditory training aims to compensate for degradation in the auditory signal and is offered as an intervention to help alleviate the most common complaint in people with hearing loss, understanding speech in a background noise. Yet there remain many unanswered questions. This article reviews some of...

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Main Authors: Ferguson, Melanie A., Henshaw, Helen
Format: Article
Published: Thieme Publishing 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40028/
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author Ferguson, Melanie A.
Henshaw, Helen
author_facet Ferguson, Melanie A.
Henshaw, Helen
author_sort Ferguson, Melanie A.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Auditory training aims to compensate for degradation in the auditory signal and is offered as an intervention to help alleviate the most common complaint in people with hearing loss, understanding speech in a background noise. Yet there remain many unanswered questions. This article reviews some of the key pieces of evidence that assess the evidence for whether, and how, auditory training benefits adults with hearing loss. The evidence supports that improvements occur on the trained task; however, transfer of that learning to generalized real-world benefit is much less robust. For more than a decade, there has been an increasing awareness of the role that cognition plays in listening. But more recently in the auditory training literature, there has been an increased focus on assessing how cognitive performance relevant for listening may improve with training. We argue that this is specifically the case for measures that index executive processes, such as monitoring, attention switching, and updating of working memory, all of which are required for successful listening and communication in challenging or adverse listening conditions. We propose combined auditory-cognitive training approaches, where training interventions develop cognition embedded within auditory tasks, which are most likely to offer generalized benefits to the real-world listening abilities of people with hearing loss.
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spelling nottingham-400282020-05-04T17:18:46Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40028/ How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening Ferguson, Melanie A. Henshaw, Helen Auditory training aims to compensate for degradation in the auditory signal and is offered as an intervention to help alleviate the most common complaint in people with hearing loss, understanding speech in a background noise. Yet there remain many unanswered questions. This article reviews some of the key pieces of evidence that assess the evidence for whether, and how, auditory training benefits adults with hearing loss. The evidence supports that improvements occur on the trained task; however, transfer of that learning to generalized real-world benefit is much less robust. For more than a decade, there has been an increasing awareness of the role that cognition plays in listening. But more recently in the auditory training literature, there has been an increased focus on assessing how cognitive performance relevant for listening may improve with training. We argue that this is specifically the case for measures that index executive processes, such as monitoring, attention switching, and updating of working memory, all of which are required for successful listening and communication in challenging or adverse listening conditions. We propose combined auditory-cognitive training approaches, where training interventions develop cognition embedded within auditory tasks, which are most likely to offer generalized benefits to the real-world listening abilities of people with hearing loss. Thieme Publishing 2015-10-26 Article PeerReviewed Ferguson, Melanie A. and Henshaw, Helen (2015) How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening. Seminars in Hearing, 36 (04). pp. 237-249. ISSN 1098-8955 Auditory training - hearing loss - working memory - attention - communication - hearing aids - executive function - speech perception https://www.thieme-connect.de/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-0035-1564456 doi:10.1055/s-0035-1568985 doi:10.1055/s-0035-1568985
spellingShingle Auditory training - hearing loss - working memory - attention - communication - hearing aids - executive function - speech perception
Ferguson, Melanie A.
Henshaw, Helen
How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening
title How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening
title_full How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening
title_fullStr How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening
title_full_unstemmed How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening
title_short How does auditory training work? Joined up thinking and listening
title_sort how does auditory training work? joined up thinking and listening
topic Auditory training - hearing loss - working memory - attention - communication - hearing aids - executive function - speech perception
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40028/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40028/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40028/