Hearing Loss and Auditory Lateralization

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Melnick ◽  
Robert C. Bilger

An experiment was conducted with 75 subjects (61 with hearing loss and 14 without) to determine if hard-of-hearing listeners could benefit from binaural cues to auditory space. Both speech and noise signals were presented through earphones, and the auditory cues to phenomenal space were provided by reversing the interaural phase of the noise. The results indicate that hard-of-hearing listeners are able to make approximately the same use of these binaural cues as listeners with normal hearing.

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 195-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Vitkovic ◽  
Carmen Le ◽  
Su-Ling Lee ◽  
Ross A. Clark

This study investigated the hypothesis that a hearing ‘map' of our surroundings is used to maintain balance control. We investigated the effects of sound on postural sway using centre of pressure analysis in 50 subjects with normal hearing, 28 with hearing loss and 19 with vestibular dysfunction. The acoustic environments utilized sound cues that were either present or absent. It was found that auditory cues are utilized by subjects with normal hearing to improve postural sway. The ability to utilize sound for postural control is diminished when there is a hearing loss, but this appears to be overcome by the use of a hearing aid. Patients with additional vestibular deficits exploit auditory cues to a greater degree, suggesting that sensory weighting to enhance the use of auditory cues may be applied when there is diminished sensory redundancy.


1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale O. Robinson ◽  
John H. Gaeth

Seven normal-hearing subjects and seven subjects with mild bilateral high-frequency sensorineural hearing losses were studied to explore the presence of diplacusis. A tracking procedure of psychophysical method of adjustment-limits was used for pitch judgments rather than the traditional method of adjustment. Each subject was presented with a standard 4000-Hz tone for 500 msec and alternately a variable tone for 500 msec. Subjects were instructed to adjust the variable tone upward or downward in pitch to bracket the pitch sensation of the standard tone. Two intra-aural and two interaural listening conditions were studied. A graphic representation of the subjects' adjustments of the variable tone was obtained for each condition. The resulting tracing indicated frequency correlates to the pitch adjustments from which excursion width and constant error were calculated. Some hard-of-hearing subjects and one normal-hearing subject were found to have diplacusis. Subjects with hearing losses exhibited larger excursion widths for intra- and interaural listening conditions. Subjects with hearing losses tended to be less consistent in pitch judgments than normal-hearing subjects. These findings were interpreted to mean that bilaterally symmetrical hearing losses increase the incidence of pitch aberrations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (12) ◽  
pp. 3487-3506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Walker ◽  
Sophie E. Ambrose ◽  
Jacob Oleson ◽  
Mary Pat Moeller

Purpose This study investigates false belief (FB) understanding in children who are hard of hearing (CHH) compared with children with normal hearing (CNH) at ages 5 and 6 years and at 2nd grade. Research with this population has theoretical significance, given that the early auditory–linguistic experiences of CHH are less restricted compared with children who are deaf but not as complete as those of CNH. Method Participants included CHH and CNH who had completed FB tasks as part of a larger multicenter, longitudinal study on outcomes of children with mild-to-severe hearing loss. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal data were analyzed. Results At age 5 years, CHH demonstrated significant delays in FB understanding relative to CNH. Both hearing status and spoken-language abilities contributed to FB performance in 5-year-olds. A subgroup of CHH showed protracted delays at 6 years, suggesting that some CHH are at risk for longer term delays in FB understanding. By 2nd grade, performance on 1st- and 2nd-order FBs did not differ between CHH and CNH. Conclusions Preschool-age CHH are at risk for delays in understanding others' beliefs, which has consequences for their social interactions and pragmatic communication. Research related to FB in children with hearing loss has the potential to inform our understanding of mechanisms that support social–cognitive development, including the roles of language and conversational access.


1989 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
T.S. Kapteyn ◽  
Johan Matter

In this article it is assumed that in speech communication not only the pronunciation by the speaker and the sensitivity and the discrimination facility of the ears of the listener are important factors, but equally the speed of processing. A previous study showed that Dutch students studying French needed more time to recognize target phonemes in spoken French sentences than did French native speakers. Based on this result it was hypothesized that the hearing impaired need more time for word recognition than comparable normal hearing subjects. To investigate this hypothesis two tests were developed: 1. A list of cvc combinations, consisting of words and non-words is presented to the subject who has to press a button as soon as he hears an existing word. 2. A series of sentences, where target words are presented in highly constraining, normally constraining and not constraining contexts. The subject has to press the response button as soon as he hears a visually presented. Recognition times for the different items measured in a group of 55 hard of hearing subjects were related to the "normal values" obtained in a group of 16 normal hearing young subjects. The tests gave a clear indication that recognition time is a significant personal measure. Besides, a correlation was found between the increase of the recognition time and hearing loss, but not between recognition time and age. It was clear that hard of hearing people needed more time for word recogni-tion and that the use of a hearing aid reduced this time interval. The measure in which the pressure for a fast reaction caused an increase in errors appeared to correlate significantly with the way subjects experienced their handicap, more than with the hearing loss and the discrimination loss as such.


Author(s):  
Margreet Vogelzang ◽  
Christiane M. Thiel ◽  
Stephanie Rosemann ◽  
Jochem W. Rieger ◽  
Esther Ruigendijk

Purpose Adults with mild-to-moderate age-related hearing loss typically exhibit issues with speech understanding, but their processing of syntactically complex sentences is not well understood. We test the hypothesis that listeners with hearing loss' difficulties with comprehension and processing of syntactically complex sentences are due to the processing of degraded input interfering with the successful processing of complex sentences. Method We performed a neuroimaging study with a sentence comprehension task, varying sentence complexity (through subject–object order and verb–arguments order) and cognitive demands (presence or absence of a secondary task) within subjects. Groups of older subjects with hearing loss ( n = 20) and age-matched normal-hearing controls ( n = 20) were tested. Results The comprehension data show effects of syntactic complexity and hearing ability, with normal-hearing controls outperforming listeners with hearing loss, seemingly more so on syntactically complex sentences. The secondary task did not influence off-line comprehension. The imaging data show effects of group, sentence complexity, and task, with listeners with hearing loss showing decreased activation in typical speech processing areas, such as the inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus. No interactions between group, sentence complexity, and task were found in the neuroimaging data. Conclusions The results suggest that listeners with hearing loss process speech differently from their normal-hearing peers, possibly due to the increased demands of processing degraded auditory input. Increased cognitive demands by means of a secondary visual shape processing task influence neural sentence processing, but no evidence was found that it does so in a different way for listeners with hearing loss and normal-hearing listeners.


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Yoshinaga-Itano

Abstract It is possible for children who are deaf or hard of hearing to attain language development comparable to their hearing peers, but these outcomes are not guaranteed. The population of children with hearing loss is a diverse population and although the variable of the age of identification is less variable, there are numerous variables that could potentially and have historically impacted language outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Variables such as hearing loss, maternal level of education, and maternal bonding can overcome the benefits of earlier identification and intervention.


ORL ro ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-65
Author(s):  
Mădălina Georgescu ◽  
Violeta Necula ◽  
Sebastian Cozma

Hearing loss represents a frequently met sensorial handicap, which has a major and complex impact not only on the hearing-impaired person, but also on his family and society. The large number of hard-of-hearing persons justifies the acknowledgement of hearing loss as a public health issue, which oblige to appropriate health politics, to offer each hearing-impaired person health services like those in Europe. These can be obtained through: appropriate legislation for mandatory universal newborn hearing screening; national program for follow-up of hearing-impaired children up to school age; national register of hard-of-hearing persons; smooth access to rehabilitation methods; appropriate number of audiologists, trained for health services at European standards, trained through public programs of education in the field of audiology.  


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Mustafa Avcu ◽  
Mehmet Metin ◽  
Raşit Kılıç ◽  
Muhammed Alpaslan

Background: In this study, optic coherence tomography (OCT) examination was performed to check whether there was any interaction between ophthalmic axonal structures in unilateral tinnitus patients, and the relationship between optic nerve thickness and cochlear nerve thickness was evaluated. Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the relatioship between hearing loss, tinnitus, and nerve thicknesses. Study Design: Prospective study. Setting: Tertiary referral university hospital. Patients: The study included 88 patients with unilateral tinnitus, for which no organic cause could be found in physical examination, psychiatric evaluation, or with imaging methods. Study groups were formed of the tinnitus side and control groups were formed of the healthy side as follows: Group 1 (Non-tinnitus side normal hearing values – n = 30), Group 2 (non-tinnitus side minimal hearing loss – n = 27), Group 3 (non-tinnitus side moderate hearing loss – n = 31), Group 4 (tinnitus side normal hearing values – n = 25), Group 5 (tinnitus side minimal hearing loss – n = 25), and Group 6 (tinnitus side moderate hearing loss – n = 38). Intervention: Retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness was evaluated with OCT, and the cochlear nerve cross-sectional area was evaluated with MRI. Main Outcome Measures: RNFL measurements were taken with OCT from the subfoveal area (RNFL-SF) and 1.5 mm temporal to the fovea (RNFL-T µm) and nasal (RNFL-N µm) sectors. On MRI, 3 measurements were taken along the nerve from the cerebellopontine angle as far as the internal auditory canal, and the mean value of these 3 measurements was calculated. Results: When the groups were evaluated in respect of cochlear nerve thickness, a significant difference was seen between Group 1 and both the groups with hearing loss and the tinnitus groups. In the subgroup analysis, a statistically significant difference was determined between Group 1 and Groups 3, 4, 5, and 6 (p = 0.013, p = 0.003, p < 0.001, and p < 0.001, respectively). When the groups were evaluated in respect of the RNFL-SF (µm), RNFL-T (µm), and RNFL-N (µm) values, the differences were determined to be statistically significant (p < 0.001 for all). In the correlation analysis, a negative correlation was determined between hearing loss and cochlear nerve diameter (r: −0.184, p = 0.014), and RNFL-N (r: −0.272, p < 0.001) and between tinnitus and cochlear nerve diameter (r: −0.536, p < 0.001), and RNFL-T (r: −0.222, p < 0.009). Conclusion: The study results clearly showed a relationship between cochlear nerve fiber thickness and hearing loss and the severity of tinnitus in cases with unilateral tinnitus and that there could be neurodegenerative factors in the disease etiology. A similar relationship seen with the RNFL supports the study hypothesis.


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