Speech Recognition Training in Children With Hearing Loss (ChAT)

Customized Auditory Brain Training for Children With Hearing Loss

clEAR's auditory brain training has been shown to be effective in improving childrens' abilities to recognize the speech of generic talkers in a laboratory setting. In the proposed research, the researchers will build upon these results and assess the extent to which auditory brain training delivered via the web enhances children's abilities to recognize the speech of a potential classroom teacher and diminishes their communication challenges that are associated with significant hearing loss. First, investigators will conduct focus groups with children who have undergone training with the research version of clEAR's pediatric games, then they will recode the games from LabView to Java Script, making changes in the games in response to the focus group comments, and finally, they will collect data from 20 children to assess whether web-based auditory brain training improves their abilities to recognize the speech of their (hypothetical) upcoming school year's classroom teacher.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Hearing Loss
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: clEAR auditory training

Detailed Description

Imagine that someday, children with hearing loss can prepare for an upcoming school year by playing computer games with their new teacher's voice throughout the summer. Then, on the first day of class, children would have that "Oprah Winfrey effect", the sense that they know the teacher. Children would be able to recognize their teacher's voice much better than they would have otherwise, and importantly, they would experience less anxiety because of the talker familiarity effect. clEAR is making that "someday" a reality today. clEAR has created a new web-based clinical tool for audiologists and teachers to provide customized auditory brain training to their patients (www.clearforears.com). Auditory brain training includes traditional analytic and synthetic training as well as training to develop those auditory cognitive skills that are necessary to decode spoken language regardless of the content (i.e., auditory working memory, auditory attention, and auditory processing speed). The centerpiece of the clEAR website is a set of auditory brain training games that patients play, with oversight and coaching from their hearing healthcare provider or from one of clEAR's inhouse audiologists. Currently, clEAR caters to adult patients, and the games require some reading ability and a vocabulary that includes the most common words of the English language (N=800 words). clEAR has been enrolling paying adult subscribers since May of 2017. In the laboratory, a research version of pediatric games is being tested. The pediatric games are "childfriendly" and require only a limited vocabulary and no reading skills. In this Phase 1, the investigators will first conduct focus groups with 10 children who have undergone training with the research version of clEAR's pediatric games, then they will recode the games from LabView to Java Script, making changes in the games in response to the focus group comments, and finally, they will collect data from 20 children to assess whether web-based auditory brain training improves their abilities to recognize the speech of their (hypothetical) upcoming school year's classroom teacher. The experimental design will be a within-subjects A1-A2-B1-B2 design, where children will serve as their own controls. Participants will be tested two times before training with a one-week interval separating the test sessions (A1 and A2), to establish a baseline performance, and then immediately after training (B1) to establish immediate gains and three weeks later to assess whether gains begin to decline following training (B2). All testing and training will occur during the summer so the experimental results will not be confounded by benefits possibly accrued through school-related activities. Children will complete a total of 16 hours of training and will follow the same schedule (i.e., play the games in a prescribed order and for a set amount of time each). Outcome measures will come from a comprehensive speech perception test battery, questionnaires, and from data collected during training and stored on the children's training tablets. In Phase II, the pediatric games will be transferred to the clEAR website and develop their commercial potential.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 34
• Phase: Phase 1

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Missouri
    • Saint Louis, Missouri, United States, 62220
      • Washington University School of Medicine

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 8 years to 12 years (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Children with moderate to severe hearing loss.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Must be native English speakers

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Auditory Training; Pre- and post assessments of auditory training intervention	Behavioral: clEAR auditory training; Children play auditory brain training computer games

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Percentage of Words Identified Before and After Training	The measure is percent of 50 common words correctly identified. Words were presented through the application and responses were recorded and scored by the audiologist administering the test.	Before and after the four week training period

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Processing Speed	How quickly, in milliseconds, a word can be discriminated from a competitor	over course of 4 weeks
Working Memory	Number of words remembered from a list of words presented sequentially	over course of 4 weeks
Subjective Assessment of clEAR Games on a 7-Point Scale	clEAR Questionnaire is given to provide researchers feedback and suggestions about the clEAR games from the child's perspective. The questionnaire used 7-point Likert scales, yes-no questions, open ended questions. Average scores across all of the Likert scale questions are reported here because they are quantifiable. Here are the questions analyzed.; How much did you like the home training program?; Do you think playing the games improved your speech discrimination abilities? (how well you understand speech); Do you think playing the games improved your confidence in conversation?; Did you enjoy playing the games in your home?; How likely would you be to tell your friends who have hearing loss about this program? Participants were asked to respond to each item using this scale: (very little) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (very much)	Measured once, after the four week training period

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Washington University School of Medicine
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Chris A Cardinal, PhD, clEAR: Customized Hearing

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 1, 2019
• Primary Completion (Actual): September 16, 2020
• Study Completion (Actual): September 16, 2020

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: July 26, 2019
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 30, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): August 1, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): November 10, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 12, 2021
• Last Verified: October 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Auditory training; Children with hearing loss
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Nervous System Diseases; Neurologic Manifestations; Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases; Ear Diseases; Sensation Disorders; Hearing Disorders; Hearing Loss; Deafness
• Other Study ID Numbers: 201602007

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO
• IPD Plan Description: Only descriptive data will be shared with other researchers

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No