Vocal emotion perception in hearing loss - feasibility of an online training program to improve emotion perception in older adults

BACKGROUND: Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) represents a frequent decline in hearing abilities reducing older adults' quality of life. Human communication not only depends on mere sound detection but also on extralinguistic and paralinguistic information like emotions. Understanding the emotions of a conversation partner is vital for connection, but is oftentimes reduced in ARHL. METHODS: A feasibility study was conducted on N = 18 (14 female) participants aged 74.6 ± 6.7 years with ARHL. Basic effectiveness and applicability of an online emotion-perception training was assessed in a pre- and post-training test. The study utilized standardized auditory stimuli of pseudowords spoken in basic emotions (anger, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness and disgust), four of which were trained in a classification task for 30 days. Accuracy improvements were assessed with ANOVA, and feedback regarding feasibility is reported descriptively. RESULTS: 17 of 18 participants showed improvements from pre-to post-training test for trained (F(1,17) = 55.66, p < .001, η²G = 0.447), but not for untrained emotions, depending on the specific emotion: significant improvements were found for the trained emotions disgust, happiness and fear, but not for sadness nor the untrained emotions surprise and anger. While the majority of patients managed the training well, open feedback indicated difficulties with the abstractness of the pseudowords and standardized procedure. CONCLUSION: While a training to improve emotion perception in older adults with ARHL was well-received and indicates first effectiveness, strategies should be developed to consider inter-individual differences, and to improve usability for older adults irrespective of education and technology experience.