American Journal of Audiology

PURPOSE: The Social Security Administration (SSA) asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM, 2021) to make recommendations for tests of functional hearing ability. These tests include speech perception measures administered in quiet and in background noise. Such tests are required to make disability determinations for adults and children following cochlear implantation. The test review required an evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of the speech perception measures...

PURPOSE: Tinnitus is a symptom of auditory dysfunction or injury and can be a precursor to permanent hearing loss. Tinnitus can interfere with communication, sleep, concentration, and mood; when this occurs, it is referred to as bothersome tinnitus. Annual hearing surveillance in the U.S. Army includes screening for bothersome tinnitus. Estimating the prevalence of self-reported bothersome tinnitus can facilitate prioritization of prevention and education efforts. The objective of this study was to examine Army hearing conservation data to estimate the prevalence of self-reported bothersome tinnitus as a function of age, hearing, sex, service component, and pay grade...

PURPOSE: This study aimed at comparing narrowband Claus Elberling level-specific chirp (NB CE-Chirp)-, click-, and tone burst-evoked masseteric vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (mVEMPs). METHOD: Within-group study design and purposive sampling were performed. A total of 25 normal-hearing individuals participated in the study. The zygomatic electrode montage was used to elicit ipsilateral mVEMP responses using a 500-Hz NB CE-Chirp, a click of 100-μs duration, and a 500-Hz tone burst stimulus...

PURPOSE: More affordable hearing aids are now available due to over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid regulations. Although laboratory studies have validated many OTC hearing technologies, there are limited real-world benefit studies. This study compared hearing aid outcomes reported by clients from OTC and conventional hearing care professional (HCP) service delivery models. METHOD: An ecological, cross-sectional survey design was employed. An online survey was sent to the Hearing Tracker user and OTC Lexie hearing aid user databases...

PURPOSE: Directed attention and habituation are key concepts pertaining to clinical intervention for bothersome tinnitus. Directed attention is the strategy of distracting attention away from the tinnitus. Habituation is the process of learning to stop paying attention to stimuli that are irrelevant or meaningless. Although tinnitus may be intrusive, it usually does not reflect some underlying condition requiring medical attention. Tinnitus in most instances is therefore considered an irrelevant, meaningless stimulus that is best treated by facilitating habituation to the phantom sound...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this scoping review was to gain an understanding of the evidence available on auditory dysfunction after childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) and identify limitations, clinical implications, and future directions for speech-language pathology and audiology practice and research. METHOD: This scoping review of the literature followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines...

PURPOSE: Cochlear implant (CI) recipients with hearing preservation experience significant improvements in speech recognition with electric-acoustic stimulation (EAS) as compared to with a CI alone, although outcomes across EAS users vary. The individual differences in performance may be due in part to default mapping procedures, which result in electric frequency-to-place mismatches for the majority of EAS users. This study assessed the influence of electric mismatches on the early speech recognition for EAS users...

PURPOSE: The Tinnitus Screener was introduced in 2015 as a four-item algorithmic instrument to assess the temporal characteristics of a person's reported tinnitus. The Tinnitus Screener was then revised as a six-item version to include a new temporal category and to capture tinnitus duration (acute < 6 months vs. chronic ≥ 6 months). When contrasted with audiologist assessment, the four-item Tinnitus Screener was determined to be highly valid, but the short-term reliability of either version remained unknown...

PURPOSE: The objectives of this study were to (a) describe normative ranges-expressed as reference intervals (RIs)-for vestibular and balance function tests in a cohort of Service Members and Veterans (SMVs) and (b) to describe the interrater reliability of these tests. METHOD: As part of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC)/Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence 15-year Longitudinal Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Study, participants completed the following: vestibulo-ocular reflex suppression, visual-vestibular enhancement, subjective visual vertical, subjective visual horizontal, sinusoidal harmonic acceleration, the computerized rotational head impulse test (crHIT), and the sensory organization test...

PURPOSE: Difficulty understanding speech in noise is a common communication problem. Clinical tests of speech in noise differ considerably from real-world listening and offer patients limited intrinsic motivation to perform well. In order to design a test that captures motivational aspects of real-world communication, this study investigated effects of gamification, or the inclusion of game elements, on a laboratory spatial release from masking test. METHOD: Fifty-four younger adults with normal hearing completed a traditional laboratory and a gamified test of spatial release from masking in counterbalanced order...

PURPOSE: Although benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is often considered benign and easily treatable, aberrant cases of persistent BPPV can be challenging to manage. Detailed differential diagnosis is essential as central-, vascular-, and cervical-related etiologies may mirror the presentation of persistent BPPV. In addition, an understanding of alternative noninvasive treatment options is important as persistent BPPV is often refractory to traditional particle repositioning maneuvers (PRMs)...

PURPOSE: Optimal measurement settings to measure the medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) in humans have not yet been defined. The purpose of this study was to advance the representation of the MOCR in auditory brainstem response (ABR) as an addition to the current diagnostic portfolio. PARTICIPANTS AND METHOD: Twelve female and 14 male normal-hearing adults participated in the study. Potential effects of a contralateral acoustic stimulus (CAS) on amplitude changes were investigated by recording ABR waveform profiles on the left side at click intensities of 50/60/70 dB nHL with and without CAS (60 dB SPL)...

PURPOSE: The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for speech presented in background noise may vary after being processed by digital hearing aids with nonlinear signal processing algorithms, such as wide dynamic range compression (WDRC). A phase inversion technique has been previously developed to assess the output SNR of hearing aids. However, systematic validations of this technique have not been conducted. This study aims to validate the phase inversion technique. METHOD: A simulated hearing aid with multichannel WDRC was implemented, from which the output SNRs, computed via shadow filtering, for connected speech in background noise were directly computed...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to review current literature regarding the epidemiology of vestibular migraine (VM), patient presentation, pathogenesis, and treatment. RECENT FINDINGS: VM is becoming an increasingly recognized condition in the United States, currently affecting 2.7% of people. Patients may experience vestibular symptoms, such as vertigo and imbalance, with or without other migrainous symptoms. Recent evidence has also shown that patients with VM are at higher risk for cochlear dysfunction, such as sudden deafness, sensorineural hearing loss, and tinnitus...

PURPOSE: The aims of this study were to adapt the Parents' Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children (PEACH) scale into Hebrew, to explore the auditory performance of children with normal hearing (NH) or hearing loss (HL), to examine changes with age, and to investigate the effect of descriptive variables on the performance of children with HL. METHOD: The PEACH scale was adapted into Hebrew using the "back-translation" method. The study included 260 parents of children with NH and 32 parents of children with HL...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence of cognitive impairment and explore its association with hearing loss and other sociodemographic and clinical risk factors, using an objective measurement of hearing levels, in adults over 50 years of age. METHOD: A population-based survey was completed in Santiago, Chile between December 2019 and March 2020. Participants were screened for cognitive impairment using the Short Chilean Mini-Mental State Examination and hearing levels were assessed with tonal audiometry (hearTest)...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an Internet delivered Mindfulness Based Tinnitus Stress Reduction (i-MBTSR) program during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tinnitus, often a chronic condition, is experienced by 15% of the population. For those with severe, bothersome tinnitus, quality of life is reduced and the treatment options are limited. We evaluated an approach intended to decrease tinnitus-related distress. METHOD: This study examined the data collected for an online i-MBTSR course using a retrospective design...

PURPOSE: Approximately 23 million Americans might have functional hearing difficulties (FHDs) that are not well explained by their audiometric thresholds. Clinical management of patients with FHDs is the subject of considerable debate, with few evidence-based guidelines to direct patient care. A better understanding of the characteristics of patients who seek help for FHDs, as well as current audiological management practices, is needed to direct research efforts to the areas greatest opportunity for advancement of clinical care...

PURPOSE: Perceived sound quality was variously compared between either no aiding or aiding with three models of hearing aid that varied the microphone position around the pinna, depth of the receiver in the auditory meatus, degree of meatal occlusion, and processing sophistication. The hearing aids were modern designs and commercially available at the time of testing. METHOD: Binaural recordings of multichannel spatially separated speech and music excerpts were made in a manikin, either open ear or aided...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of online testing in a quiet room for three auditory perception experiments in normal-hearing listeners: speech, music, and binaural cue. METHOD: Under Experiment 1, sentence perception was measured using fixed signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs: +10 dB, 0 dB, and -10 dB) and using adaptive speech reception threshold (SRT) procedures. The correct scores were compared between quiet room and soundproof booth listening environments...