title: Environmental sound training in cochlear implant users.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The study investigated the effect of a short computer-based environmental sound training regimen on the perception of environmental sounds and speech in experienced cochlear implant (CI) patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fourteen CI patients with the average of 5 years of CI experience participated. The protocol consisted of 2 pretests, 1 week apart, followed by 4 environmental sound training sessions conducted on separate days in 1 week, and concluded with 2 posttest sessions, separated by another week without training. Each testing session included an environmental sound test, which consisted of 40 familiar everyday sounds, each represented by 4 different tokens, as well as the Consonant Nucleus Consonant (CNC) word test, and Revised Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN-R) sentence test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Environmental sounds scores were lower than for either of the speech tests. Following training, there was a significant average improvement of 15.8 points in environmental sound perception, which persisted 1 week later after training was discontinued. No significant improvements were observed for either speech test.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings demonstrate that environmental sound perception, which remains problematic even for experienced CI patients, can be improved with a home-based computer training regimen. Such computer-based training may thus provide an effective low-cost approach to rehabilitation for CI users, and potentially, other hearing impaired populations.
authors: Valeriy
authors: V
authors: Shafiro
authors: Stanley
authors: S
authors: Sheft
authors: Sejal
authors: S
authors: Kuvadia
authors: Brian
authors: B
authors: Gygi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003054:Cochlear Implants / Q000523:psychology*; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise; D013016:Sound
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