A Perspective on Auditory Wellness: What It Is, Why It Is Important, and How It Can Be Managed.
Larry E Humes, Sumitrajit Dhar, Vinaya Manchaiah and 4 others
PMID 39150412WHAT IT FOUND
A normal audiogram does not guarantee good listening.
Many adults with good hearing wellness report trouble hearing, poorer speech in noise, and social communication problems. The paper proposes self-check tools, but does not show they improve outcomes.
Key findings
01Roughly one-third of adults 50 years and older with good hearing wellness had poor auditory wellness in a large dataset, and about 20% in a population dataset.
02In reanalysis of 245 adults, 130 with good hearing wellness, older groups performed worse on some temporal speech-sequence tasks than young adults, while gap detection and dichotic location did not differ.
03Among adults with good hearing wellness, reduced auditory wellness was associated with poorer communication adjustment and speech-in-noise performance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is a perspective and reanalysis of existing data, not a trial of the proposed self-management pathway. The tools described, including RHHI, hearWHO, and CEDRA, are proposed for broad use but their effect on auditory wellness or communication outcomes is not shown. Prevalence estimates change with how normal hearing and auditory wellness are defined, so the reported percentages are not interchangeable. Some datasets are clinical samples, including a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center dataset, so they may overrepresent people with hearing problems. The proposed pathway is U.S.-centric because it assumes OTC hearing aids are available. Age-group differences in temporal processing cannot be separated from cognitive or other factors. Self-report measures can be affected by denial or unawareness, and the article notes common method bias as a possible explanation for some associations.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest and no funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the proposed self-management pathway as evidence that OTC hearing aids or the RHHI, hearWHO, and CEDRA tools improve auditory wellness. The paper presents a framework and reanalysis of existing data, not a trial of these tools.