Any hearing loss can affect communication, but listeners with severe loss face the greatest challenges. For those listeners, speech is less audible, more distorted, and more susceptible to background noise. How should we address the needs of listeners with severe and profound loss?
Difficulties associated with spoken conversation are a primary impairment for adults with mild cognitive impairment or dementia, but most studies on communication affected by Alzheimer’s dementia did not consider – or treat--the additive impact of hearing loss.
Providers within and outside audiology have asserted that screening and awareness of cognitive decline should be part of treatment decisions. We were interested to know how and when audiologists screened for cognitive change.
Listening can be difficult—and hearing aids alone may not be sufficient to improve communication--when the speaker is at a distance, in a noisy environment, or in a reverberant space. In a recent study, adult participants with sensorineural hearing loss were provided with a remote microphone, the Roger Select, for a one-month trial.
