AUDITORY LEARNING · The effects of auditory training on human communication skills: behavior and physiology
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2009-03-01 → 2013-02-28
- EU contribution
- €100,000
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IRG
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Results in brief
The effects of auditory training on human communication skills: behavior and physiology
Goals, major outcomes and conclusions Whether intensive practice can be used to boost communication skills in the general population (e.g., when learning a new language) as well as in populations with impaired communication skills (e.g., individuals with language impairments) is subject to debate. Specifically, although intensive training often yields learning of the trained tasks and materials, generalization to untrained, ‘real-life’, conditions is often limited. Against this background, our major goal was to compare the effects of different training regimens (‘ecological’ training, with real-life tasks and materials ; ‘speech’ training with real sentences with a non-ecological task; basic auditory training with non-verbal stimuli) on the generalization of learning to untrained conditions. Across regimens the greatest amount of learning was always observed on the trained conditions. Both ‘ecological’ and ‘speech’ training yielded similar patterns of generalization to untrained materials. Basic auditory training resulted in the least amount of generalization to untrained materials. We conclude that ‘ecological’ or ‘speech’ training might be more beneficial than basic auditory training in rehabilitation and education settings. The findings leading to this conclusion are presented in detail in two manuscripts (1) Song J., Skoe E., Banai K. & Kraus N. (2012) Training to improve hearing speech in noise: biological mechanisms. Cerebral Cortex. 22(5): 1180-1190; (2) Banai K. & Lavner Y. (2012). Perceptual learning of time-compressed speech: More than rapid adaptation. PLoS One. 7(10): e47099. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047099. The reasons for the rather limited amounts of generalization following basic auditory training are discussed in a review (Banai K. & Amitay S. (2012). Stimulus uncertainty in auditory perceptual learning. Vision Research. 61:83-88). Further factors associated with learning and generalization (e.g., the effects of musical experience; sensitivity to repetitions; age) were also published in 5 additional peer-reviewed publications. Potential socio-economic impact The outcomes of this study are relevant to two large populations -- persons with age-related hearing loss (the number of which increases with the aging of the population in Europe and elsewhere), and adults learning a novel-language (e.g., immigrants). Although further studies are required to reveal the optimal training conditions, our findings suggest that computerized training might result in improved speech perception under non-ideal listening conditions, and therefore could be considered to supplement more common learning and rehabilitation strategies. Contact details Dr. Karen Banai, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Haifa, Israel. Email: kbanai@research.haifa.ac.il
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Human communication relies on an array of auditory skills ranging from basic encoding of sound to auditory memory and attention. Improving these skills could benefit many individuals who either attempt to improve their communication skills (e.g., by learning a foreign language) or suffer from communication disorders. However, improving auditory skills remains a challenge because the mechanisms underlying auditory learning are poorly understood. In particular it is not clear whether learning simple auditory skills can generalize to more complex ones. To address this issue, we will compare the outcomes of different auditory training regimens in the general population and between individuals with and without persistent reading and learning difficulties. We hypothesize that learning will modify both general and specific auditory mechanisms. However, we expect that while the modification of specific encoding mechanisms will be closely related to the nature of the stimuli used in training, general mechanisms like attention will be similarly affected by different training programs. To this end, students learning English as a second language will train on one of three training regimens (the first 2 are commercially available) emphasizing either general listening skills (LACE), phonemic discriminations (Phonomena), or basic auditory skills. Cognitive, perceptual and neural outcomes of training will be compared between the trained groups as well as to naïve controls. In addition to the theoretical implications of the proposed study, it is expected to provide clinicians, educators and the general public information regarding the suitability of the studied training regimens to specific clinical or educational purposes. The study’s relevance to the Work program lies in the central question it addresses in Auditory Neuroscience and the way it will facilitate the (re)integration of the coordinator to the EU/Israeli scientific community after working in the US.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA · HaifaCoordinatorIsrael
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union