A Systematic Review for Auditory Training Effect Based on Korean Database

Abstract

Auditory training should be necessary to improve listeners' performance in auditory tasks in terms of active listening. Many clinicians, thus, believe that it is a potential intervention and an important component of the effective rehabilitation for hearing-impaired listeners. In the present paper, we reviewed articles of the auditory training based on the Korean database which accumulated over 20 years and scrutinized their training effects. Using key terms 'auditory training,' 'aural rehabilitation' from four Korean electronic databases, 258 articles were systematically found from 1998 to present. Among them, 21 articles met our inclusion criteria which followed a procedure of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flow diagram. Then, their study quality was evaluated using ten pre-defined scientific and intervention-specific measures. Unfortunately, meta-analysis technically failed to confirm due to heterogeneity among the sample data. The average scores of qualitative evaluations for 21 articles were 9.62 (± 2.40), while showing a large difference in the quality. Only 7 out of 21 articles statistically supported that the hearing-impaired listeners had a significant improvement after conducting the auditory training. Regardless, most of the articles analyzed couldn't include systematic standards for the auditory training effect to be concluded comprehensively. Our findings demonstrate that published evidence for efficacy of the auditory training in the hearing-impaired listeners isn't robust and thus can't be reliably used to guide intervention at this time. When highly-qualitied evidence provides its efficacy for people with hearing loss in many following studies, it will suggest appropriate research direction on the auditory training program for the clinical application in Korea.