Clinical Trials Logo

Clinical Trial Summary

clEAR's auditory brain training has been shown to be effective in improving childrens' abilities to recognize the speech of generic talkers in a laboratory setting. In the proposed research, the researchers will build upon these results and assess the extent to which auditory brain training delivered via the web enhances children's abilities to recognize the speech of a potential classroom teacher and diminishes their communication challenges that are associated with significant hearing loss. First, investigators will conduct focus groups with children who have undergone training with the research version of clEAR's pediatric games, then they will recode the games from LabView to Java Script, making changes in the games in response to the focus group comments, and finally, they will collect data from 20 children to assess whether web-based auditory brain training improves their abilities to recognize the speech of their (hypothetical) upcoming school year's classroom teacher.


Clinical Trial Description

Imagine that someday, children with hearing loss can prepare for an upcoming school year by playing computer games with their new teacher's voice throughout the summer. Then, on the first day of class, children would have that "Oprah Winfrey effect", the sense that they know the teacher. Children would be able to recognize their teacher's voice much better than they would have otherwise, and importantly, they would experience less anxiety because of the talker familiarity effect. clEAR is making that "someday" a reality today. clEAR has created a new web-based clinical tool for audiologists and teachers to provide customized auditory brain training to their patients (www.clearforears.com). Auditory brain training includes traditional analytic and synthetic training as well as training to develop those auditory cognitive skills that are necessary to decode spoken language regardless of the content (i.e., auditory working memory, auditory attention, and auditory processing speed). The centerpiece of the clEAR website is a set of auditory brain training games that patients play, with oversight and coaching from their hearing healthcare provider or from one of clEAR's inhouse audiologists. Currently, clEAR caters to adult patients, and the games require some reading ability and a vocabulary that includes the most common words of the English language (N=800 words). clEAR has been enrolling paying adult subscribers since May of 2017. In the laboratory, a research version of pediatric games is being tested. The pediatric games are "childfriendly" and require only a limited vocabulary and no reading skills. In this Phase 1, the investigators will first conduct focus groups with 10 children who have undergone training with the research version of clEAR's pediatric games, then they will recode the games from LabView to Java Script, making changes in the games in response to the focus group comments, and finally, they will collect data from 20 children to assess whether web-based auditory brain training improves their abilities to recognize the speech of their (hypothetical) upcoming school year's classroom teacher. The experimental design will be a within-subjects A1-A2-B1-B2 design, where children will serve as their own controls. Participants will be tested two times before training with a one-week interval separating the test sessions (A1 and A2), to establish a baseline performance, and then immediately after training (B1) to establish immediate gains and three weeks later to assess whether gains begin to decline following training (B2). All testing and training will occur during the summer so the experimental results will not be confounded by benefits possibly accrued through school-related activities. Children will complete a total of 16 hours of training and will follow the same schedule (i.e., play the games in a prescribed order and for a set amount of time each). Outcome measures will come from a comprehensive speech perception test battery, questionnaires, and from data collected during training and stored on the children's training tablets. In Phase II, the pediatric games will be transferred to the clEAR website and develop their commercial potential. ;


Study Design


Related Conditions & MeSH terms


NCT number NCT04041440
Study type Interventional
Source Washington University School of Medicine
Contact
Status Completed
Phase Phase 1
Start date September 1, 2019
Completion date September 16, 2020

See also
  Status Clinical Trial Phase
Recruiting NCT04696835 - fNIRS in Pediatric Hearing Aids N/A
Completed NCT03662256 - Reducing Childhood Hearing Loss in Rural Alaska Through a Preschool Screening and Referral Process Using Mobile Health and Telemedicine N/A
Completed NCT04602780 - Evaluating the Revised WORQ in CI Users
Completed NCT03723161 - Evaluation of the Ponto Bone Anchored Hearing System in a Pediatric Atresia Population
Completed NCT05086809 - Investigation of an Updated Bone-anchored Sound Processor N/A
Active, not recruiting NCT03548779 - North Carolina Genomic Evaluation by Next-generation Exome Sequencing, 2 N/A
Completed NCT03428841 - Audiovisual Assessment After Dural Puncture During Epidural Placement in Obstetric Patients N/A
Completed NCT04559282 - Home Test of New Sound Processor N/A
Enrolling by invitation NCT03345654 - Individually-guided Hearing Aid Fitting
Completed NCT06016335 - MRI-based Synthetic CT Images of the Head and Neck N/A
Completed NCT05165121 - Comparison of Hearing Aid Fitting Outcomes Between Self-fit and Professional Fit for MDHearing Smart Hearing Aids N/A
Recruiting NCT05533840 - Establishment and Application of a New Imaging System for Otology Based on Ultra-high Resolution CT
Completed NCT04622059 - AUditive Direct In-utero Observation (AUDIO): Prenatal Testing of Congenital Hypoacusis N/A
Terminated NCT02294812 - Effects of Cognitive Training on Speech Perception N/A
Recruiting NCT02558478 - Identification of New Genes Implicated in Rare Neurosensory Diseases by Whole Exome Sequencing N/A
Withdrawn NCT02740322 - Validating the Hum Test N/A
Completed NCT01963104 - Community-Based Kiosks for Hearing Screening and Education N/A
Completed NCT01892007 - Evaluation of Cogmed Working Memory Training for Adult Hearing Aid Users N/A
Completed NCT01857661 - The Influence of the Sound Generator Combined With Conventional Amplification for Tinnitus Control: Blind Randomized Clinical Trial N/A
Withdrawn NCT01223638 - The Prevalence of Hearing Loss Among Children With Congenital Hypothyroidism N/A