Aural rehabilitation is a therapeutic service designed to support hearing aid and cochlear implant users. It includes counseling and education about hearing loss, communication strategies, and guided listening practice--sometimes called auditory training. A professional, usually a speech/language pathologist or audiologist, develops an individualized aural rehabilitation program to fit a person's self-identified set of priorities and treatment goals. Progress is tracked and goals are reevaluated over time. Research has shown that auditory training can help individuals, especially cochlear implant recipients, improve their abilities to process and interpret sounds.
Aural rehabilitation is recommended for anyone who wants to better understand their hearing loss, and/or improve their speech understanding, communication, or music perception abilities. An aural rehabilitation program can be tailored to individuals with any degree of hearing loss, hearing aid users, or those who have undergone cochlear implantation.
Auditory training may be directed toward some or all of these listening skills:
Detection of Isolated Speech Sounds
Discrimination of Minimal Pairs of Words
Listening and Understanding Phrases and Sentences
Listening and Understanding Paragraphs
Listening and Understanding in Noise
Listening and Understanding on the Phone
Auditory Memory
Music Perception
Music Appreciation
The University of Iowa's Center for Auditory Training Resources
All three cochlear implant companies offer tips, communication strategies, and computer or app-based auditory training on their websites: