Attention, Auditory Processing, Music Listening
Conditions
Keywords
Cognitive Training, Auditory Training, Music, Aging
Brief summary
The proposed study will enroll healthy older adult participants to examine the effectiveness of music listening activities to promote hearing and cognition. Participants will be randomized into one of four experimental groups and can expect to participate for up to 21 hours of research distributed over 20 weeks.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALMusic Listening with Attentional prompts
Participants will listen to musical excerpts, and guided instructions will be provided to tell the participants what aspect of the music to pay attention to and how to respond. Participants will log responses on an interactive tablet-based interface.
BEHAVIORALMusic Listening
Participants will listen to musical excerpts and will be provided with guided instructions directing their attention to specific aspects of the music. Participants will report when they perceive a noticeable change in the music (e.g., changes in instrumentation, rhythm, texture, or intensity). Participants will log responses on an interactive tablet-based interface.
BEHAVIORALTone listening with Attentional prompts
Participants will be asked to attend to auditory stimuli and respond to them according to guided instructions. Participants will log responses on an interactive tablet-based interface.
Sponsors
Northeastern University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
DOUBLE (Subject, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
60 Years to 101 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Age: 60+ * No self-reported auditory difficulties and normal or near-normal hearing sensitivity as measured by SRTs. * Should have no more than typical hearing loss for their age and no evidence of dementia. * Fluent in English and/or Spanish * No more than two years of formal music training in childhood OR in the past 20 years
Exclusion criteria
* Abnormal vision or hearing prohibitive of training * History of seizures, focal brain lesion, or head injury with loss of consciousness * Physical handicap (motor or perceptual) that would impede training procedures * Social, educational or economic hardship prohibitive to training schedule Concurrent enrollment in other cognitive training studies * History of major psychiatric illness, including psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression, alcohol or substance abuse, recent bereavement * Geriatric Depression Scale-15 (GDS-15) score of 6 or higher, indicating clinically significant depressive symptoms * Not being proficient enough in English or Spanish that would prevent following and understanding all instructions and completing all testing sessions * Diagnosis of dementia or other neurological disease, including mild cognitive impairment (MCI) * Telephone-Montreal Cognitive Assessment (t-MoCA) score of 16 or less
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Digits-in-Noise Task | Pre-test (week 1), Mid-test (week 5), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | The Digits-in-Noise (DIN) test presents trials of three sequential spoken digits against a broad-band, speech-shaped masker. Signal/noise ratio is varied adaptively to track 50% correct. The dependent variable is the threshold noise tolerance in dB. Lower scores indicate better performance. |
| Spatial Release From Masking Task | Pre-test (week 1), Mid-test (week 5), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | Tests the ability to distinguish speech from competing speech. Collocated condition uses target and two competing maskers all located directly in front of the listener, and spatially separated condition uses two masking sentences sent from 45 degrees to the left and right of center. Sentences are correctly identified as part of a series of test trials in which TMR progressively reduced every two trials. The dependent variable is the threshold target-to-masker ratio (TMR) as estimated based on the number of sentences correctly identified. Lower scores indicate better performance. |
| Dichotic Sentence Identification Task | Pre-test (week 1), Mid-test (week 5), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | The DSI test simultaneously presents two nonsense sentences, one to each ear. Participants indicate two sentences heard from a list of alternatives. DSI sentences are presented at a comfortable listening level, usually 50 dB above pure-tone average of each ear. The dependent variable is the percentage of sentences correctly identified. Higher scores indicate better performance. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Revised Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly (RHHI) | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | Survey that assesses the perceived level of hearing ability under different environmental or social situations, and participants also self-report ear surgeries or known ear pathologies. The dependent variable is total score (summed). Higher scores indicate greater perceived handicap. |
| Speech Recognition Threshold using Coordinate Response Measure | Pre-test (week 1), Mid-test (week 5), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | SRT stimuli from the Coordinate Response Measure are sentences that participants hear that contain a color and number (e.g., "Ready Charlie, go to blue three now"). Participants select one of 36 colored/numbered squares that matches the color-number combination of the sentence. The dependent variable is the threshold target-to-masker ratio (TMR) as estimated based on the number of sentences correctly identified as part of a series of 20 test trials in which TMR progressively reduced every two trials. Lower scores indicate better performance. |
| Gap Detection Task | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10) | Temporal sensitivity to silent gaps between pairs of brief (4 ms) bandlimited stimuli. The gap duration will start at 6 ms, and be reduced from there using a staircase procedure. The dependent variable is the threshold (in ms) at which participants stop responding accurately. Lower scores indicate better performance. |
| Spectrotemporal Sensitivity Task | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10) | Stimuli are either unmodulated or are spectrotemporally modulated in amplitude using two cycles/octave for the spectral modulation and 4 Hz for the temporal modulation. Modulation depth in decibels (dB) will be adaptively varied to estimate threshold. The dependent variable is the threshold (in dB) at which participants stop responding accurately. Lower scores indicate better performance. |
| Monaural and Binaural Sensitivity to Frequency Modulation Task | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10) | The stimulus is a pure tone that is modulated sinusoidally and varies at a rate of 2 Hz. The task is to detect differences between modulated and unmodulated tones, and the modulated "depth" in Hz is tracked adaptively. The BFM stimuli are identical to MFM except for presentation to both ears with increasing frequency in one ear and decreasing in the other. The dependent variable is the threshold (in Hz) at which participants stop responding accurately. Lower scores indicate better performance. |
| Audio Visual Divided Attention Task | Pre-test (week 1), Mid-test (week 5), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | Participants are presented with auditory sequences of spoken digits and visual sequences of written letters. Participants will be instructed to recall a particular sequence either in advance (assesses selective attention) or only afterwards (assesses divided attention). The dependent variable is the fall-off of reaction time and accuracy across a the single-stream task. Higher scores indicate better performance. |
| Paced Serial Addition Task | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | Participants are shown a series of numbers one at a time. Their goal is to add the last two numbers presented and select the answer that correctly adds the two numbers. Participants are shown single digit numbers and are required to answer on a number pad . The dependent variable is the total number of correct responses. Higher scores indicate better performance. |
| Letter-Number Sequencing Task | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | The participant is presented with a mixed order of letters and numbers and must remember and sort them numerically and alphabetically. Set size starts at 2 and increases until the participants fail to recall both trials at a given set size. The dependent variable is Score (total number of correct trials). Higher scores indicate better performance. |
| Auditory N-back Task | Pre-test (week 1), Post-test (week 10), Follow-up (week 18) | Participants are presented with a consecutive stream of tones through headphones, and are asked to tap on the screen every time the currently presented item matches the one presented N items earlier. The dependent variable consists of accuracy on each of the levels calculated as hits/(hits+misses+false alarms). Higher scores indicate better performance. |
Countries
United States
Contacts
CONTACTAudrey Carrillo, MA
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATORSusanne Jaeggi, PhD
Northeastern University
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATORAaron Seitz, PhD
Northeastern University
Outcome results
None listed