The study was designed to assess the impact of hearing impairment on communication between older hospital patients and medical staff and to see whether intervention to improve hearing influences perceived communication. Structured interviews were held with 200 mentally alert elderly hospital in-patients before and after the introduction of voice amplifiers and acetate cards depicting a hearing problem. Prior to intervention 22% of patients rated communication with their doctor as poor or unsatisfactory. Following intervention there was a significant improvement (Chi-square p=0.006), with only 6% of patients reporting communication with their doctor as poor or unsatisfactory. Most of the patients who felt communication was unsatisfactory could not hear what was being said. We conclude that simple measures can improve the number of older patients hearing what their doctor says and improve their perception of communication with the hospital doctor. (+info)
Auditory rehabilitation of older people from the general population--the Leiden 85-plus study.
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BACKGROUND: Very few older people with severe hearing loss use hearing aids to reduce the negative consequences of reduced hearing in daily functioning. AIM: Assessment of a screening test and a standardised auditory rehabilitation programme for older people from the general population with untreated severe hearing loss. DESIGN OF STUDY: Intervention study and qualitative exploration. SETTING: Leiden 85-Plus Study, a prospective population-based study of 85-year-old inhabitants of Leiden, the Netherlands. METHOD: Hearing loss was measured by pure-tone audiometry in 454 subjects aged 85 years. Subjects with hearing loss above 35 dB at 1, 2, and 4 kHz who did not use hearing aids were invited to participate in a standardised programme for auditory rehabilitation. In-depth interviews were held with participants to explore arguments for participating in this programme. RESULTS: Of the 367 participants with severe hearing loss (prevalence = 81%), 66% (241/367) did not use a hearing aid. Three out of four of these participants (n = 185) declined participation in the auditory rehabilitation programme. The most common reason given for not participating was the subjects' feeling that their current hearing loss did not warrant the use of a hearing aid. Subjects who participated in the programme were found to suffer from more severe hearing loss and experienced more hearing disability. Those who did not participate in the programme felt they could cope with their disabilities and considered a hearing aid unnecessary. CONCLUSION: Untreated hearing loss is prevalent among older people from the general population. The majority of older people decline auditory rehabilitation. For these people the use of a hearing aid is not perceived as necessary in order to function on a daily basis. Older people who have expected benefits from a hearing aid have already obtained them, marginalising the benefits of a rehabilitation (and screening) programme. (+info)
Do Fourteenth Amendment considerations outweigh a potential state interest in mandating cochlear implantation for deaf children?
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Currently, the decision concerning pediatric cochlear implantation for children remains a personal choice for parents to make. Economic factors, educational outcomes, and societal attitudes concerning deafness could result in an increased governmental interest in this choice. This article examines case law related to the issue of parental autonomy to determine whether the state, acting in the role of parens patriae, could use economic and social reasons to mandate the provision of cochlear implants for all eligible children. The author uses previous cases as a framework to develop an opinion on whether a constitutional protection for parents may exist. (+info)
Everyone here speaks TXT: deaf people using SMS in Australia and the rest of the world.
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This article examines the extent to which Short Message Service (SMS) messages are breaking down communication barriers among deaf people and between deaf and hearing people. It is predicted that deaf texters will use SMS to increase the bonds between themselves in deaf communities, creating new opportunities to develop relationships, understanding, and intimacy with those not physically present. The most exciting question raised by this article is whether those kinds of relationships, understanding, and intimacy will develop to the same extent with hearing colleagues, friends, and intimates. (+info)
Individual differences in language performance after cochlear implantation at one to three years of age: child, family, and linguistic factors.
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Language skills were investigated in a multicultural sample of 13 prelingually deaf children (11 profoundly deaf from birth) who received cochlear implants between 14 and 38 months of age; average duration of implant use was 49 months. Individual postimplant language skills ranged from extremely delayed to age appropriate. On average, skills varied across domains: on vocabulary, several children functioned in the average range compared with hearing peers, but all were below that range on a test emphasizing syntax (CELF-P). Children with preimplant hearing experience had the highest scores on all language measures. Excluding these children, age of implantation (range 14 to 27 months) associated inversely and significantly with CELF-P scores, even when nonverbal IQ was controlled. Qualitative analyses indicated higher child language achievement associated with parents' reports of lengthy, in-depth processes to decide about cochlear implantation. Such reports may indicate high levels of ongoing parent involvement with child and programming. (+info)
Searching for cochlear implant information on the internet maze: implications for parents and professionals.
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The present study has three purposes: (a) to determine who disseminates information on cochlear implants on the Web; (b) to describe a representative sample of Web sites that disseminate information on cochlear implants, with a focus on the content topics and their relevance to parents of deaf children; and (c) to discuss the practical issues of Web-based information and its implications for professionals working with parents of deaf children. Using the terms "cochlear implants" and "children," the first 10 sites generated by the four most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, and America Online) at two points in time were selected for analysis, resulting in a sample of 31 Web sites. The majority of Web sites represented medically oriented academic departments and government organizations, although a wide variety of other sources containing information about cochlear implants were also located. Qualitative analysis revealed that the content tended to fall into eight categories; however, the important issues of educational concerns, habilitation following surgery, and communication methods were either addressed minimally or neglected completely. Using analytical tools that had been developed to evaluate "user friendliness" in other domains, each Web site was assessed for its stability, service/design features and ease of use. In general, wide variability was noted across the Web sites for each of these factors. The strong recommendation is made that professionals understand and enhance their knowledge of both the advantages and limitations of incorporating the new technology into their work with parents. (+info)
Self-esteem and coping strategies among deaf students.
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Research studies on the determinants of self-esteem of deaf individuals often yield inconsistent findings. The current study assessed the effects on self-esteem of factors related to deafness, such as the means of communication at home and severity of hearing loss with hearing aid, as well as the coping styles that deaf people adopt to cope with everyday life in a hearing world. Data were collected among the deaf students of California State University, Northridge. Hierarchical regression modeling showed that identification with the Deaf community significantly contributed to positive self-esteem. Results also revealed that deaf students with greater degree of hearing loss and with bicultural skills that help them function in both the hearing and the Deaf community generally have higher self-esteem. Implications for further study are discussed. (+info)
Nonword repetition by children with cochlear implants: accuracy ratings from normal-hearing listeners.
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Seventy-six children with cochlear implants completed a nonword repetition task. The children were presented with 20 nonword auditory patterns over a loud-speaker and were asked to repeat them aloud to the experimenter. The children's responses were recorded on digital audiotape and then played back to normal-hearing adult listeners to obtain accuracy ratings on a 7-point scale. The children's nonword repetition performance, as measured by these perceptual accuracy ratings, could be predicted in large part by their performance on independently collected measures of speech perception, verbal rehearsal speed, and speech production. The strongest contributing variable was speaking rate, which is widely argued to reflect verbal rehearsal speed in phonological working memory. Children who had become deaf at older ages received higher perceptual ratings. Children whose early linguistic experience and educational environments emphasized oral communication methods received higher perceptual ratings than children enrolled in total communication programs. The present findings suggest that individual differences in performance on nonword repetition are strongly related to variability observed in the component processes involved in language imitation tasks, including measures of speech perception, speech production, and especially verbal rehearsal speed in phonological working memory. In addition, onset of deafness at a later age and an educational environment emphasizing oral communication may be beneficial to the children's ability to develop the robust phonological processing skills necessary to accurately repeat novel, nonword sound patterns. (+info)