Effects of mild-to-moderate sensorineuralhearing loss and signal amplification on vocalemotion recognition in middle-aged–olderindividuals

• Previous research has shown deficits in vocal emotion recognition in sub-populations of individuals with hearing loss, making this a high priority research topic. However, previousresearch has only examined vocal emotion recognition using verbal material, in which emotions are expressed through emotional prosody. There is evidence that older individualswith hearing loss suffer from deficits in general prosody recognition, not specific to emotionalprosody. No study has examined the recognition of non-verbal vocalization, which constitutes another important source for the vocal communication of emotions. It might be thecase that individuals with hearing loss have specific difficulties in recognizing emotionsexpressed through prosody in speech, but not non-verbal vocalizations. We aim to examinewhether vocal emotion recognition difficulties in middle- aged-to older individuals with sensorineural mild-moderate hearing loss are better explained by deficits in vocal emotion recognition specifically, or deficits in prosody recognition generally by including both sentencesand non-verbal expressions. Furthermore a, some of the studies which have concluded thatindividuals with mild-moderate hearing loss have deficits in vocal emotion recognition abilityhave also found that the use of hearing aids does not improve recognition accuracy in thisgroup. We aim to examine the effects of linear amplification and audibility on the recognitionof different emotions expressed both verbally and non-verbally. Besides examining accuracy for different emotions we will also look at patterns of confusion (which specific emotionsare mistaken for other specific emotion and at which rates) during both amplified and nonamplified listening, and we will analyze all material acoustically and relate the acoustic content to performance. Together these analyses will provide clues to effects of amplification onthe perception of different emotions. For these purposes, a total of 70 middle-aged-olderindividuals, half with mild-moderate hearing loss and half with normal hearing will perform acomputerized forced-choice vocal emotion recognition task with and without amplification

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Tillämpad psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Applied Psychology (hsv//eng)

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