Skip to main content
Seminars in Hearing logoLink to Seminars in Hearing
. 2015 Nov;36(4):237. doi: 10.1055/s-0035-1568985

How does Auditory Training Work? Joined up Thinking and Listening

Melanie Ferguson 1,2,, Helen Henshaw 1
PMCID: PMC4954542  PMID: 27827530

The publisher regrets an error with the wording in the last line in the Abstract in the above article in Seminars in Hearing, Volume 36, Number 4, 2015, p. 237. The corrected Abstract is indicated below.

Abstract

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 is clear 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, are most likely to offer generalized benefits to the real-world listening abilities of people with hearing loss.


Articles from Seminars in Hearing are provided here courtesy of Thieme Medical Publishers

RESOURCES