A serious game for listening-in-noise training in adults with cochlear implant: a randomized controlled trial. (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Adults with cochlear implants (CI) find listening-in-noise challenging even after prolonged experience. Personalized auditory training (AT) programs can be proposed to improve specific auditory skills in adults with CI. OBJECTIVE The objective was to evaluate the efficacy of a 5-week serious game-based intensive AT-in-noise-program in CI recipients on SNR for speech-in-noise. The secondary objective was to evaluate the benefits of this program over time by reassessing the trained group 5 weeks after the end of the AT. METHODS Thirty adults with post-lingual deafness and at least nine months of experience with CI were randomized to participate in a 5-week specific serious game-based intensive AT program (n=15) or a control group (n=15). The serious game-based training consisted of specific tasks that targeted auditory skills. All participants were tested at enrolment and at 5 weeks using the sentence recognition-in-noise Fr-Matrix test to determine the SNR at a speech reception threshold (SRT) of 70%. In addition, participants in the trained group were retested 5 weeks after the end of the training program. RESULTS Thirteen patients completed the training program and were tested pre- and post-training. The intensive 5-week auditory training-in-noise program was associated with an improvement of SNRs with SRT fixed at 70%, the gain induced after training was 4 dB SNR (15.5 dB and 11.5 dB before and after, respectively, p< 0.001). No significant changes in speech reception in noise scores after five weeks were observed in the non-trained group. CONCLUSIONS Listening-in-noise training, using an adapted serious game-based strategy, may improve auditory perception performance under adverse environmental conditions for adults with CI, and could thus contribute to the enhancement of their quality of life and maximize the benefits of their implants. CLINICALTRIAL Local ethic committee: CPP Sud-Est IV 14/034 ID RCB 2014-A00345-42 ClinicalTrials: NCT02323256