Individualized home-based phoneme training for adult cochlear implant users reduces phoneme confusion errors

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Phoneme confusion errors are a significant challenge for adult cochlear implant (CI) users.
• Current rehabilitation strategies may not fully address individual phoneme perception deficits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a novel, personalized phoneme training mobile application for adult CI users.
• To assess the efficacy of app-based, individualized training in reducing phoneme confusion errors.

Main Methods:

• Twenty-one adult CI users completed a four-week at-home training program using a customized mobile app.
• Daily training sessions (20 minutes) focused on individual phoneme errors identified via pre-training tests.
• Training was conducted in 5-minute intervals, five days a week.

Main Results:

• Participants demonstrated significant group-level improvements in targeted phoneme error reduction.
• Most participants achieved over 10% improvement in phoneme confusion errors, irrespective of age or device.
• Individual training effects showed variability, with some carry-over to word perception.

Conclusions:

• Personalized, app-based phoneme training is a promising approach to enhance speech perception in adult CI users.
• Home-based, self-paced training empowers users and can improve communication outcomes.
• This individualized, bottom-up method effectively targets specific phoneme deficits.