Rate Discrimination Training May Partially Restore Temporal Processing Abilities from Age-Related Deficits

This study’s purpose was to evaluate the effects of rate d iscrimination training on auditory temporal processing. A double-blind, randomized control design assigned 77 young normal-hearing, older normal-hearing, and older hearing-impaired listeners to one of two treatment groups: experimental (rate discrimination for 100- and 300-Hz pulse trains) and activ e control (tone detection in noise). All listeners were evaluated during pre- and post-training sessions using perceptual rate discrimination of 100-, 200-, 300-, and 400-Hz band-limited pulse trains and auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) to the same stimuli. Training generalization was evaluat ed using several temporal processing measures and sentence recognition tests that included time-compressed and reverberant speech stimuli. Results demonstrated a session × training group interaction for perceptual and ASSR testing to the trained frequencies (100 and 300 Hz), driven by greater improvements in the training group than in the active control group. Further, post-test rate discrimination of the older listeners reached levels that were equivalent to those of the younger listeners at pre-test. Generalization was observed in significant improvement in rate discrimination of untra ined frequencies (200 and 400 Hz) and in correlations between performance changes in rate discrimination and sentence recognition of reverberant speech. Further, non-auditory inhibition/attention performance predicted training-related ...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research