Aging and Hearing Loss :: Cognitive Geriatrics Essays

Aging and Hearing Loss Hearing loss is often overlooked because our hearing is an invisible sense that is incessantly expected to be in action. Yet, there are people everywhere that suffer from the effects of hearing loss. It is important to study and understand all aspects of the many another(prenominal) different types and reasons for hearing loss. The loss of this particular sense can be socially debilitating. It can affect the communication skills of the person, not only in receiving information, barely also in giving the correct response. This paper focuses primarily on hearing loss in the elderly. One thing that affects older individuals communication is the trouble they often experience when recognizing time compressed speech. Time compressed speech involves fast and unclear conversational speech. Many older listeners can detect the run low of the speech being spoken, but it is still unclear (Pichora-Fuller, 2000). In order to help with diagnosis and rehabilitation, we n eed to understand why speech is unclear withal when it is audible. The answer to that question would also help in the development of hearing aids and other communication devices. Also, as we come to understand the reasoning idler this question and as we become more knowledgeable about what older adults can and cannot hear, we can better accommodate them in our day to day interactions. at that place are many approaches to the explanation of the elderlys difficulty with rapid speech. Researchers point to a decline in processing speed, a decline in processing legal brief acoustic cues (Gordon-Salant & Fitzgibbons, 2001), an age-related decline of temporal processing in general (Gordon-Salant & Fitzgibbons, 1999 Vaughan & Letowski, 1997), the fact that both visual and auditory perception change with age (Helfer, 1998), an interference of automatic function of the ear, possible sensorineural hearing loss due to damage to receptors over time (Scheuerle, 2000), or a decline in the proce ssing of sounds in midbrain (Ochert, 2000). Each one of these could be a possible explanation however it is often a combination of several of these causing a perceptual difficulty in the individual.Helfer (1998) recognized the slowing of our temporal perceptual processes with increasing age. He suggested that this leads to auditory deformity, especially in the instance of time compressed speech. quarrel comprehension requires rapid processing of stimuli that is not always completed in time-compressed speech because of the shortening of phonemes and a decrease in pauses. Helfer went a step further by taking into account that hearing is not just auditory but it is also visual, in that we use cues like looking at the persons oral cavity or facial expression while having a conversation.