Linking Affective and Hearing Sciences-Affective Audiology.
Min Zhang, Greg J Siegle
PMID 37904515WHAT IT FOUND
Hearing loss, tinnitus, and listening effort may be linked to mood, stress, motivation, and stigma.
Clinicians could ask about emotional states and adjust hearing assessments or hearing aid settings when mood or stress affects listening performance.
Key findings
01Listening effort is described as closely related to motivation and mood.
02Most non-audiological factors in hearing aid uptake and use are described as related to stigma, identity, and attitudinal beliefs.
03Daily tracking in 278 tinnitus app users found emotional arousal, stress, mood, and concentration influenced tinnitus loudness and distress.
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 selective narrative review, not a systematic review, so the evidence base is not fully transparent. It reports no original participants or clinical outcomes, so it cannot show that affective assessment or emotion-focused treatment changes hearing, tinnitus, or hearing aid use. Many cited links are correlational, from animal or lesion studies, or from small studies, and may not apply to typical therapy patients. The paper is audiology-focused, and relevance to physical therapy or occupational therapy is not stated. Clinical suggestions, such as mood induction before hearing assessment or adjusting hearing aid programs, are proposed but not tested in this paper.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The work was funded by Shanghai Municipal Key Clinical Specialty.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this review as evidence that assessing mood, reducing stigma, or adding emotion-focused therapy improves hearing or tinnitus outcomes. The paper is a selective narrative review, and its clinical suggestions are not tested.