International Journal of Audiology最新文献

Objective: We have shown that the acoustic change complex (ACC) can be elicited by changing the horizontal sound location in young individuals. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the application of ACC within the elderly and its relationship with behavioural results.

Design: The minimum audible angle (MAA), as well as onset cortical auditory evoked potentials (onset-CAEPs) and ACC elicited by the stimuli of location-change white noise (±45 to ±2 degrees) were recorded. Latencies and amplitudes were analysed using repeated-measures ANOVA. Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between ACC and MAA.

Study sample: Ten older adults with normal hearing (NH) and twenty with presbycusis.

Results: The ACC was effectively elicited with angular variations in elderly participants. The onset-CAEP N1 latency, ACC N1'-P2' amplitude, and N1' latency were all associated with the angle shifts, with the N1' latency being the most predictive factor for angle discrimination. The consistency between MAA and ACC made them complementary for the clinical evaluation of sound localisation.

Conclusions: The utilisation of ACC, evoked by location-change sounds, presented a promising clinical objective measure for evaluating sound localisation abilities in the elderly.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of sound stimulation for enhancing drug distribution in the cochlea's perilymph, crucial for treating one of the most inaccessible organs and a major disability factor worldwide.

Design: A systematic scoping review following PRISMA guidelines was conducted, analysing studies on cochlear fluid dynamics influenced by sound stimulation. Data were collected from PubMed and Google Scholar using both MeSH and non-MeSH terms, with exclusions for unrelated topics.

Study sample: Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria, providing insights into the mechanics of cochlear perilymphatic flow and its potential enhancement through sound stimulation.

Results: The review highlights two primary mechanisms capable of inducing significant perilymphatic flow from the base towards the apex: complex audible sound stimulation creating a "streaming channel" and low-frequency stimulation at high intensity. Despite the theoretical potential, the clinical applicability of these techniques remains unproven, and the safety of low-frequency, high-intensity stimulation for the cochlea and vestibular system should be demonstrated.

Conclusions: Sound stimulation appears to be a viable method for inducing perilymphatic movements, potentially improving drug delivery to remote cochlear regions. Future research should focus on the clinical safety and efficacy of these stimulations to fully utilise this approach in therapeutic applications.

Objective: Cochlear implants (CI) provide users with a spectrally degraded acoustic signal that could impact their auditory emotional experiences. This study evaluated the effects of CI-simulated spectral degradation on emotional valence and arousal elicited by environmental sounds.

Design: Thirty emotionally evocative sounds were filtered through a noise-band vocoder. Participants rated the perceived valence and arousal elicited by each of the full-spectrum and vocoded stimuli. These ratings were compared across acoustic conditions (full-spectrum, vocoded) and as a function of stimulus type (unpleasant, neutral, pleasant).

Study sample: Twenty-five young adults (age 19 to 34 years) with normal hearing.

Results: Emotional responses were less extreme for spectrally degraded (i.e., vocoded) sounds than for full-spectrum sounds. Specifically, spectrally degraded stimuli were perceived as more negative and less arousing than full-spectrum stimuli.

Conclusion: By meticulously replicating CI spectral degradation while controlling for variables that are confounded within CI users, these findings indicate that CI spectral degradation can compress the range of sound-induced emotion independent of hearing loss and other idiosyncratic device- or person-level variables. Future work will characterize emotional reactions to sound in CI users via objective, psychoacoustic, and subjective measures.

Objective: The emotional prosodic expression potential of children with cochlear implants is poorer than that of normal hearing peers. Though little is known about children with hearing aids.

Design: This study was set up to generate a better understanding of hearing aid users' prosodic identifiability compared to cochlear implant users and peers without hearing loss.

Study sample: Emotional utterances of 75 Dutch speaking children (7 - 12 yr; 26 CHA, 23 CCI, 26 CNH) were gathered. Utterances were evaluated blindly by normal hearing Dutch listeners: 22 children and 9 adults (17 - 24 yrs) for resemblance to three emotions (happiness, sadness, anger).

Results: Emotions were more accurately recognised by adults than by children. Both children and adults correctly judged happiness significantly less often in CCI than in CNH. Also, adult listeners confused happiness with sadness more often in both CHA and CCI than in CNH.

Conclusions: Children and adults are able to accurately evaluate the emotions expressed through speech by children with varying degrees of hearing loss, ranging from mild to profound, nearly as well as they can with typically hearing children. The favourable outcomes emphasise the resilience of children with hearing loss in developing effective emotional communication skills.

Objective: Smartphone-based self-testing could facilitate large-scale data collection and remote diagnostics. For this purpose, the matrix sentence test (MST) is an ideal candidate due to its repeatability and accuracy. In clinical practice, the MST requires professional audiological equipment and supervision, which is infeasible for smartphone-based self-testing. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the feasibility of self-administering the MST on smartphones, including the development of an appropriate user interface for the small screen size.

Design: We compared the traditional closed matrix user interface (10 × 5 matrix) to three alternative, newly-developed interfaces (slide, type, wheel) regarding SRT consistency, user preference, and completion time.

Study sample: We included 15 younger normal hearing and 14 older hearing-impaired participants in our study.

Results: The slide interface is most suitable for mobile implementation, providing consistent and fast SRTs and enabling all participants to perform the tasks effectively. While the traditional matrix interface works well for most participants, some participants experienced difficulties due to its small size on the screen.

Conclusions: We propose the newly-introduced slide interface as a plausible alternative for smartphone screens. This might be more attractive for elderly patients that may exhibit more challenges with dexterity and vision than our test subjects employed here.

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify risk factors for self-reported balance problems, and to analyse associations between hearing and balance.

Design: A battery of tests was administered to assess hearing and balance performance, as well as additional health-related factors indicative of frailty and fall risk. In a retrospective analysis, logistic regression was used to identify risk factors for self-reported balance problems and linear regression was used to identify associations between hearing ability and functional balance.

Study sample: For the risk factor analysis, 199 volunteers aged 55-81 years (mean:67) were divided into two groups according to their self-reported balance problems. Only participants lacking self-reported balance problems (n = 157) were included in the second analysis.

Results: Female gender, frailty, and fine-motor skills were statistically significant predictors of self-reported balance problems. Functional balance performance was related to hearing impairment for dynamic, but not for static, balance tasks.

Conclusion: For a holistic approach to healthcare and regardless of age, individuals with multiple comorbidities and/or phenotypic signs of frailty should be considered at risk for falls. For further research, it was shown that dynamic, rather than static, balance tasks may be needed to gain deeper insights into the relationship between hearing and balance.

Objective: Developments in smartphone technology and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the feasibility and need for remote, but reliable hearing tests. Previous studies used remote testing but did not directly compare results in the same listeners with standard lab or clinic testing. This study investigated validity and reliability of remote, self-administered digits-in-noise (remote-DIN) compared with lab-based, supervised (lab-DIN) testing. Predictive validity was further examined in relation to a commonly used self-report, Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing (SSQ-12), and lab-based, pure tone audiometry.

Design: DIN speech reception thresholds (SRTs) of adults (18-64 y/o) with normal hearing (NH, N = 16) and hearing loss (HL, N = 18), were measured using English-language digits (0-9), binaurally presented as triplets in one of four speech-shaped noise maskers (broadband, low-pass filtered at 2, 4, 8 kHz) and two phases (diotic, antiphasic).

Results: High, significant intraclass correlation coefficients indicated strong internal consistency of remote-DIN SRTs, which also correlated significantly with lab-DIN SRTs. There was no significant mean difference between remote- and lab-DIN on any tests. NH listeners had significantly higher SSQ scores and remote- and lab-DIN SRTs than listeners with HL. All versions of remote-DIN SRTs correlated significantly with pure-tone-average (PTA), with the 2-kHz filtered test being the best predictor, explaining 50% of the variance in PTA. SSQ total score also significantly and independently predicted PTA (17% of variance) and all test versions of the remote-DIN, except the antiphasic BB test.

Conclusions: This study underscores the effectiveness of remote DIN test and SSQ-12 in assessing auditory function. These findings suggest the potential for wider access to reliable hearing assessment, particularly in remote or underserved communities.

Objective: A review was conducted to investigate the current evidence for effects of otitis media (OM) on phonological awareness and reading skills in children under 12 years old.

Design: A review conducted in 2024 to identify articles between 1978 and 2024 related to OM and its impact on (pre-)reading skills.

Study sample: An initial search across six databases provided 6808 research outputs. After screening, 27 articles were retained. Screening of the references on the selected articles provided an additional 6, giving 33 articles in the final review.

Results: The selected research papers did not all evaluate the same phonological awareness or reading skills. Of the studies, 20 identified that a history of OM impacted reading outcomes. Twelve studies found no significant impact while one study showed an impact which resolved with time.

Conclusion: The findings do not show a consistent association between a history of OM and phonological processing or reading skills. This is likely due to the wide range of methodologies employed and variability in the focus of the respective studies. Future research, including longitudinal studies, would be beneficial to infer the potential impacts of OM on phonological processing or reading skills.

Objectives: Wireless sound transfer methods for cochlear implant sound processors have become popular for remote self-assessed hearing tests. The aim of this study was to determine (1) spectral differences in stimuli between different wireless sound transfer options and (2) the effect on outcomes of speech recognition tests in noise.

Design: In study 1, the frequency response of different streaming options (Phonak Roger Select, Cochlear Mini Mic 2+, telecoil and Bluetooth connection) was measured by connecting headphones to CI sound processors. Study 2 followed a repeated measures design in which digits-in-noise (DIN) tests were performed using wireless streaming to sound processors from Cochlear, Advanced Bionics, and MED-EL.

Study sample: 20 normal hearing participants.

Results: Differences in frequency response between loudspeaker and wireless streaming conditions were minimal. We did not find significant difference in DIN outcome (F_4,194 = 1.062, p = 0.376) between the wireless transfer options with the Cochlear Nucleus 7 processor. No significant difference in DIN outcomes was found between Bluetooth streaming and the loudspeaker condition for all of the three tested brands. The mean standard error of measurement was 0.72 dB.

Conclusions: No significant differences in DIN test outcomes between wireless sound transfer and the reference method were found.