Occupational performance: comparing normally-hearing and hearing-impaired employees using the Amsterdam Checklist for Hearing and Work.

This study compares the occupational performance of employees with and without hearing impairment, and aims to identify occupational difficulties specifically related to hearing loss. The Amsterdam Checklist for Hearing and Work was administered to 150 hearing-impaired employees and 60 normally-hearing colleagues. A multivariate analysis of variance was performed to test group effects, and to examine differences between means.

A home education program for older adults with hearing impairment and their significant others: a randomized trial evaluating short- and long-term effects.

This paper addresses the development and effectiveness of a home education program. The program, designed for hearing-impaired elders and their significant others (SO), deals with communication strategies and speech reading. Participants were randomly assigned to a training group (hearing aid fitting+home education program) or a control group (hearing aid fitting).

Development and validation of an automatic speech-in-noise screening test by telephone.

To meet the need for an objective self-test for hearing screening. a new Dutch speech-in-noise test was developed. Digit triplets were used as speech material.

The association of hearing impairment and chronic diseases with psychosocial health status in older age.

Objectives: This study examines the association of hearing impairment and chronic diseases (diabetes mellitus, lung disease, cardiac disease, stroke, cancer, peripheral artery disease, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis) with psychosocial status (depression, self-efficacy, mastery, loneliness, social network size) in older persons.

Methods: The sample consists of 3,107 persons (55 to 85 years) participating in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam. MANOVA, adjusted for covariates, was used to test the effect of hearing impairment on the combined outcomes.

A proposal for a model to calculate hearing disability.

The present paper presents an alternative method to calculate hearing disability. As opposed to existing models to calculate hearing disability, the present method is not just based on the pure-tone audiogram. Hearing activities playing an important role in daily listening are taken into account: detection of sounds, distinction of sounds, intelligibility in quiet and in noise, auditory localization.

The self-reported handicapping effect of hearing disabilities.

This study investigates the extent to which individuals see themselves as being handicapped by a hearing disability. Self-reports were obtained with the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap which distinguishes five basic disabilities: intelligibility in noise, intelligibility in quiet, localization of sounds, distinction of sounds and detection of sounds. Responses of 239 hearing-impaired people with varying types of hearing loss have been examined.

The effects of involvement of the general practitioner and guidance of the hearing impaired on hearing-aid use.

A number of international and national publications report that hearing aids are sometimes under used. In this paper, results are reported of a project to increase the effective use of hearing aids. The first intervention was aimed at a more effective exchange of information between the general practitioner (GP) and the ENT specialist.

[Rehabilitation possibilities for hearing-impaired subjects].

Hearing impairment is a symptom, not a diagnosis. A number of types of hearing impairment can be distinguished. The self-reported hearing problems cluster around six hearing factors, the most important of which are speech understanding in noise and localisation of a sound source.

Evaluation of fitting rules with a programmable hearing aid.

A study was performed with the 3M 8200 multi-programmable hearing aid in order to try to identify an optimal frequency-gain response, based on the standard calculation rules: NAL, POGO, Berger and Half gain. Furthermore, we examined to what extent multiple programs are used and appreciated. The 3M hearing aid was presented to 126 hearing-impaired patients for a trial period.

Assessing aspects of auditory handicap by means of pupil dilatation.

The demand on extra effort and concentration during listening are notorious handicapping effects of hearing impairment as is shown by self-assessment studies. In an attempt to explore new ways of assessing hearing handicap, the present study focuses on an objective measure of mental effort during listening. Pupil dilatation is used as the index of mental effort.

The relationships between self-reported hearing disability and measures of auditory disability.

Although required for many practical purposes, adequate measures of hearing disability are not yet available. In an attempt to identify a set of performance tests for predicting hearing disability in daily life the relationship between self-reported disability scores and measures of auditory disability was examined. The Amsterdam Inventory was completed by 51 respondents aged 30 to 70 years who also performed on various tests.

Factors in subjective hearing disability.

This report describes an approach to identify different factors in hearing disability. On the basis of interviews and case studies, the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap was developed. It consists of 30 questions, dealing with a variety of everyday listening situations.

Effect of time scale modification of speech on the speech recognition threshold in noise for elderly listeners.

The effect of time scale modification of speech on the speech recognition threshold in noise (SRTN) was investigated for a group of 44 elderly subjects, varying in age from 56 to 88 years with sloping mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing losses. Subjects' pure-tone average thresholds at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 Hz (PTA1) ranged from 3 to 58 dB. The study confirms the well-known fact that speech recognition in noise deteriorates with increasing age.

Effect of time-scale modification of speech on the speech recognition threshold in noise for hearing-impaired and language-impaired children.

In this study, the effect of time-compression and expansion of speech on speech perception in noise was measured for a group of hearing-impaired and a group of language-impaired children relative to control groups of normal children and normal adults. The children's ages ranged from 9 to 12 years. For all time-scale modified conditions, both hearing-impaired and language-impaired children had significantly higher speech recognition thresholds in noise (SRTN) than their normal peers, who performed almost equally well as the adult control group.

Technical possibilities in the school situation for the education of hearing-impaired children.

For hearing-impaired children, the main problem in the classroom is the signal-to-noise ratio. To improve the signal-to-noise ratio, several class systems have been developed, three of which have been investigated in this study. The systems are shown to be equivalent in a situation without a channel for pupil response.

Verification of the air-bone gap using cancellation and evoked responses.

Using the cancellation method as well as evoked responses, we investigated their application in the estimation of the air-bone gap in patients undergoing operation on middle ear structures. The cancellation method had a closer relationship with pure-tone audiometry than evoked responses in predicting the air-bone gap. This was caused by recruitment, by which the cancellation method was not affected.

Phase relationship between bone and air conducted impulse signals in the human head.

Using the cancellation method we investigated the phase relationship as well as the amplitude ratio between impulse signals transmitted simultaneously via both bone and air conduction channels. The psychophysical findings indicated a phase difference corresponding to a time delay of about 0.9 ms by which the air input led the bone input in the case of frontal bone stimulation.

Comparison of the latencies between bone and air conduction in the auditory brain stem evoked potential.

Brain stem auditory evoked potentials obtained by air and bone conduction were investigated in 22 subjects. The necessity for a carefully selected stimulus being presented to the headphone and the bone vibrator is discussed. Latency values of both responses are presented for wave V.

Effect of contralateral and ipsilateral masking of acoustic stimulation on the latencies of auditory evoked potentials from cochlea and brain stem.

Masking techniques were applied to a group of 10 subjects with normal hearing, to investigate the influence of masking on the latencies of brain stem auditory evoked potentials. The levels of sufficient masking and overmasking were determined. Central masking, as established in a psychophysiological manner, cannot be clearly demonstrated by auditory brain stem evoked potentials.

[Rehabilitation possibilities in presbycusis].

Although several types of hearing loss in aged people can be distinguished, the word presbyacusis has grown to common use. It is not primarily the decrease of sensitivity for sounds, but rather the decrease of the ability for discrimination and the increase of being troubled by noisy circumstances, that impair understanding of speech. Conversation with aged people have to be practised slowly and in a well pronounced way in favourite circumstances for listening.

The mechanism of physiological height vertigo. II. Posturography.

In order to validate the hypothesis that height vertigo is based on visual destabilization of free stance when the distance between eye and object becomes critically large, several of its consequences were demonstrated in posturographic experiments: (1) Visual signals conflicting with simultaneous vestibular and somatosensory inputs provided by sinusoidally tilting rooms may destabilize postural sway in the fore-aft as well as in the lateral direction. (2) In natural surrounding sway amplitudes increase with increasing eye-object distance up to 5 meters. Thus, teleologically, subjective height vertigo serves as an appropriate warning signal to withdraw the body from a stimulus situation inducing postural imbalance.