Recruiting

Auditory Training

Sponsor:

Northeastern University

Code:

NCT06812273

Conditions

Hearing Handicap

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18 - 70+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

STM Training

Speech Training

Mixed Training

Gamified Training

Foraging Training

Study Details

Brief summary:

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn how Auditory Training (AT) may help people better understand speech in noisy environments. As people get older, it becomes harder for them to hear speech clearly when there is background noise. This can be frustrating, and it can affect their independence and quality of life. AT is often used to support people with and without hearing loss, especially when a person is not a good candidate for a hearing aid or when amplification from a hearing aid does not improve performance.

The investigators want to gather reliable data to understand how AT works and what affects its success.

The main questions the trial aims to answer are:

  • How do different types of sounds influence the effectiveness of auditory training?
  • Which auditory training approaches are most successful in improving speech understanding?
  • How do personal traits impact the results of auditory training?

The investigators will study a large and diverse group of 1,260 participants, including both young and older adults, to evaluate various auditory training approaches.

You will:

  • Take part in auditory training sessions that include different types of auditory tasks.
  • Complete tests that measure how well they understand speech in both quiet and noisy settings.
  • Complete surveys on personal data like demographics, hearing challenges and other factors to help researchers understand what might influence training results.

The investigators will measure and compare the results of these approaches to find out which ones are most effective. This could help people who are at risk of cognitive decline, like those at risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Conditions

Hearing Handicap

Study ID

NCT06812273

Start date

Jan 6, 2025

Status verified date

Apr, 2026

Completion date

May 31, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

May 31, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18 - 70+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • 18-30 and 60-85 years of age.
  • No self-reported auditory difficulties and normal or near-normal hearing sensitivity as measured by SRTs.
  • Older adults aged 50-85 should have no more than typical hearing loss for their age and no evidence of dementia.
  • Fluent in English and/or Spanish

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Abnormal vision or hearing prohibitive of training
  • History of seizures, focal brain lesion, or head injury with loss of consciousness
  • Physical handicap (motor or perceptual) that would impede training procedures
  • Medical illness requiring treatment during the study timeline
  • Social, educational or economic hardship prohibitive to training schedule
  • Concurrent enrollment in other cognitive training studies
  • History of major psychiatric illness, including psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression, alcohol or substance abuse, recent bereavement
  • Plans to travel out of the area for more than 1 week during the intervention period
  • Residence too far from the testing site, which would prevent attending the testing sessions (> 60 miles)
  • Not being proficient enough in English or Spanish that would prevent following and understanding all instructions and completing all testing sessions

Additional exclusion criteria for older adults:

  • Diagnosis of dementia or other neurological disease, including mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
  • Telephone-Montreal Cognitive Assessment (t-MoCA) score of 16 or less or Montreal Cognitive AssessmentMoCA) score of 20 or less

Study Design

Enrollment

1260 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Basic Science

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: STM Training

experimental: Speech Training

experimental: Mixed Training

experimental: Gamified Training

experimental: Foraging Training

no intervention: Business As Usual

Interventions

STM Training

This condition consists of an up/down spectral-temporal modulations (STM) presented both in quiet and with competing background noise

Speech Training

Participants will train on the identification of three sets of speech stimuli of increasing linguistic complexity: individual phonemes (vowels), spondaic words, and matrix sentences.

Mixed Training

This condition involves both the STM and the speech training, described above, and an additional module training localization.

Gamified Training

This uses auditory training within a game experience where players control a game avatar (the "wisp") that appears to fly through a landscape. Players were asked to help the wisp avoid obstacles or choose from among options based on a variety of sound cues.

Foraging Training

This adds a component to the game where participants navigate the wisp to the location on the screen that relates to the target stimulus. The concept here is that searching for targets with manual movements, ecologically stimulates sensori-motor loops where the actions of the participants generates the auditory stimuli that are heard.

Primary outcome measure

  • Digits-in-Noise (DIN) Task [ Time Frame: Pre-test (day 3), mid-test (day 20), post-test (day 36), follow-up (day 66) ]
  • Spatial Release From Masking (SRM) [ Time Frame: Pre-test (day 3), mid-test (day 20), post-test (day 36), follow-up (day 66) ]
  • Dichotic Sentence Identification (DSI) [ Time Frame: Pre-test (day 3), mid-test (day 20), post-test (day 36), follow-up (day 66) ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Audrey Carrillo, M.A.

626-482-8091a.carrillo@northeastern.edu

Locations

University of California, Riverside

Recruiting

Riverside, California, United States, 92521

Contacts

Audrey Carrillo

a.carrillo@northeastern.edu

Northeastern University

Recruiting

Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02115

Contacts

Audrey Carrillo, M.A.

a.carrillo@northeastern.edu

Principal Investigator:

Aaron Seitz, PhD

Oregon Health & Science University

Recruiting

Portland, Oregon, United States, 97239

Contacts

Lauren Charney

503-494-5375charneyl@ohsu.edu

Principal Investigator:

Tess Koerner, PhD

More Information

Sponsor

Northeastern University

Last update posted

Apr 20, 2026

Last verified

Apr, 2026

Keywords

  • audition
  • auditory training
  • cognition

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-11. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Northeastern University on 2026-04-20.