Presbycusis, Part 2: Can You Hear the Music of Life?

Abstract

T he results of our open-ended avenues of inquiry in preaudiology screening of 10 participants revealed they were incapable of hearing sounds in the environment nor were they able to engage in meaningful conversation with caregiver(s). The results of postaudiology screening show that all 10 could hear sounds in the environment by various pitch ranges and rhythms. Many sounds had been long forgotten, such as household appliances, street traffic, train whistles, and birds. Another benefit to hearing technology was socialization. Participants said they attended Sunday worship services and heard the sermons (either in church or by television) and participated in singing sacred songs. Other comments participants gave concerning their morale, life satisfaction, and social support were the following:Communication has improved and I'm happier, less confused, and less sad because now I can hear what other people are saying to me.Now, I can play cards with my grandson!I can carry on a conversation now-before I was pretending to hear-now I hear and participate in conversations.I can return to driving to visit my friends.I will now engage in theatrical and music performances because I can hear.CAREGIVERSDespite caregivers' concerns that the caregiver scale (see Appendix A) and the annoying problem behaviors log calendar (see Appendix B) were too difficult to understand and complete, 7 of 10 caregivers were (a) compliant in tracking the number of hours participants wore their hearing aids (see Table 1) and (b) compliant in tracking participants' annoying problem behaviors and assigning a value from 0 (least) to 4 (most) that reflected their frustrations with participants. Table 2 illustrates the outcome of caregiver logs over an 8-week period and the total number of hours that participants wore their hearing aids for the study. The results of three remaining caregivers were dissimilar: (a) a caregiver and parent withdrew 1 week into the study; (b) a caregiver and parent spent 4 weeks waiting for ear canal impressions and hearing aids so that by the time the hearing aids were fitted and worn for 4 weeks, the study had ended. This prevented the student researcher from measuring results; and (c) a caregiver only completed one out of eight log sheets on her parent during the 8-week period for reasons that are speculative.Results of Caregiver ScaleAll eight participants, for which there were completed caregiver logs, revealed either some annoying problem behaviors lessened or they disappeared altogether with the use of hearing technology in less than 30 days. There was an equal division among analyses by caregivers in the pretreatment Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) dementia instrument of participant behaviors.On the one hand, one half of caregivers rated their parent or spouse as not having dementia behaviors: (a) not suspicious of other people hiding and stealing their property, (b) cognizant of living in their own homes, and (c) never demonstrating behaviors of paranoia or suspiciousness.On the other hand, one half of caregivers rated their parent or spouse as having dementia behaviors: (a) believing someone other than himself or herself was hiding their property, (b) talking to imaginary people, (c) hoarding or hiding property from caregivers, and (d) hearing voices or imagining conversations with other people.Yet after wearing hearing aids for 30 days, these annoying problem behaviors lessened or they discontinued altogether.Because the primary investigator did not administer the MMSE scale before and after to 10 participants, measurement of cognitive test scores are unavailable. However, based on the student researcher's observations of participants throughout the study, she has rated participant behaviors in both pretreatments and posttreatments (see Table 2). The student researcher did not observe behavioral signs of dementia in three participants for 8 weeks. …