Can people with hearing loss benefit from speech training at home?

Speech training is known to improve speech understanding in noise for some normal hearing, hearing aid and cochlear implant users. Different speech training methods are currently available, depending on the speech components used for the training (phoneme, word, sentence or a mixture of these). Previously, we have shown that phoneme-based training in the lab improves speech understanding of untrained material in noise for normal hearing listeners, hearing aid and cochlear implant users (Serman, 2012; Schumann et al., 2015; Schumann et al., 2017). Here, we report on the benefits of app-based, self-performed phoneme training at home for fifteen subjects with mild to moderate hearing loss.

Objective measures showed that, as expected, subjects improved on trained material (phoneme recognition in quiet and in noise), whereas the performance on untrained monosyllabic words in quiet (fixed level) did not change before and after training. The most interesting finding was that phoneme training at home improved speech reception thresholds in noise, for untrained material.

References:
Serman, M., 2012, Paper presented at the 15th Annual meeting of the German Society of Audiology, 2012; Erlangen, Germany
Schumann et al., 2015, International Journal of Audiology, 54(3):190-198
Schumann et al., 2017, Laryngorhinootology 96(2): 98-102