The Impact of Trained Conditions on the Generalization of Learning Gains Following Voice Discrimination Training.
Yael Zaltz
PMID 39212078WHAT IT FOUND
Gains from voice discrimination training did not transfer better than no training for combined voice cues, although the trained task itself improved.
Only training with background noise improved sentence recognition in noise more than no training, so the training environment mattered.
Key findings
01Voice discrimination with combined F0 and formant cues improved from the first to the second assessment, but group and stimulus did not have significant effects.
02Voice discrimination thresholds improved from the first to the second training session, and this learning did not differ significantly between quiet and noise training conditions.
03Speech recognition thresholds in noise improved more steeply in the Trained-in-Noise group than in the Trained-in-Quiet and Control groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Participants were young adults with normal hearing, so the study does not show what happens in children, older adults, or people with hearing or cognitive impairment. Group assignment was semirandomized and produced uneven groups, which may have introduced bias and baseline differences. The Trained-in-Quiet group started with better speech-in-noise thresholds, potentially leaving less room to improve. The speech-in-noise test used the same speaker and background noise as the noise training, so transfer to real-world listening was not tested. One control participant was excluded because their voice discrimination data were more than 2.5 standard deviations from the group mean. The noise-trained group received voice discrimination training plus background noise, so the study does not isolate the effect of noise exposure alone.
Declared interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of the article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that voice discrimination training in quiet improves speech-in-noise recognition. The quiet-trained group did not improve more than the control group on combined voice cues, and only the noise-trained group showed greater speech-in-noise improvement.