Grant: Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA)

Unaddressed age-related hearing loss is highly prevalent among older adults, and may lead to poorer speech-in-noise perception, reduced social interaction, and lower psychosocial wellbeing. This population is chronically underserved, as many do not access or cannot afford conventional hearing care. There is promising evidence that group singing may enhance speech-in-noise perception and psychosocial wellbeing; however, robust evidence is lacking due to small sample sizes, single-site designs, and the absence of randomized controlled trials. This study addresses these gaps using a multi-site, randomized controlled trial with pre-registration (Lo et al., PLoS ONE, 2024). We will recruit 40 adults aged 60 or older with unaddressed hearing loss, randomly assigned to either a 12-week group singing intervention (n=20) or an audiobook club active control (n=20). Testing occurs at macro timepoints (pre/post across 12 weeks) using speech and music perception tasks, psychosocial questionnaires, and EEG, and at micro timepoints (pre/post each weekly session) using questionnaires, saliva samples, and heart-rate variability. We hypothesize that group singing will improve speech perception and psychosocial outcomes more than the control condition. By focusing on older adults with unaddressed hearing loss, this study prioritizes an underserved population and aims to produce findings that are broadly generalizable and directly relevant to community health.