Detecting incipient inner-ear damage from impulse noise with otoacoustic emissions.

Audiometric thresholds and otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) were measured in 285 U.S. Marine Corps recruits before and three weeks after exposure to impulse-noise sources from weapons' fire and simulated artillery, and in 32 non-noise-exposed controls.

Metaphor Performance in Children With Hearing Impairment.

Metaphor comprehension and use were evaluated in children with hearing impairment (HI) who performed within normal age limits on norm-referenced measures of language. Participants were 13 children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss and 12 children with normal hearing and normal development (10:0 to 15:7 years:months). Three verbal metaphor tasks (comprehension, preference, and completion) and one visual metaphor task, the Metaphor Triads Task (MTT), were administered.

The effectiveness of the Navy's Hearing Conservation Program.

The purposes of this study were to determine the incidence of significant threshold shift (STS) for a large number of Naval fleet personnel, evaluate hearing conservation program (HCP) compliance for a large number of Naval ships, and determine whether two currently used compliance measures are useful means of evaluating HCP effectiveness. Data were collected from 12,492 medical records of 154 ships/submarines regarding STS incidence and follow-up, percent of valid audiograms, and other HCP elements. Data analyses suggested that STS incidence (29%) and follow-up compliance (62%) among fleet personnel may be too high and low, respectively, although audiogram compliance is 80.