MUSIC APPRECIATION OF HEARING AID USERS
Looi V, Rutledge K.
The Department of Communication Disorders. The University of Canterbury. Christchurch, New Zealand.
This study aimed to investigate whether there are any differences in the music appreciation levels of hearing aid (HA) users as a function of hearing loss (mild vs. moderate or worse), as well as between HA users that have been assessed for a cochlear implant (CI) (HA-CI group) and those who have not been assessed for a CI (HA-NCI group). It was hypothesised that: i) music enjoyment levels of the HA-CI group would be worse than for the HA-CI group; and ii) that HA users with a moderate or worse hearing loss will have lower music enjoyment levels than those with a mild hearing loss.
An existing questionnaire developed for CI recipients was modified for this study. Participants were asked about: (i) music listening habits and enjoyment; (ii) their ratings of how instrumental families, voices, and musical styles sounded with a HA compared to how they expect them to sound to a person with normal hearing; (iii) self-training strategies adopted to try to improve music listening; (iv) factors affecting their music listening enjoyment, and (v) interest in a music training program.
Thirteen HA-CI and 98 HA-NCI participants returned the questionnaire. The HA-NCI group was divided into two subgroups: mild (n = 51), and moderate or worse (‘moderate+’; n = 47). It was found that the HA-CI group had significantly lower music listening (p = 0.001) and enjoyment levels than the HA-NCI group (p = 0.021). They also provided lower ratings in terms of ‘pleasantness’ and ‘naturalness’ for instruments and music styles than the HA-NCI group. For the comparisons between the mild and moderate+ subgroups, results were mixed, although most commonly, there were no significant differences between the groups. Overall the results showed that HA users judged instruments to sound significantly different to how they would expect it to sound to a person with normal hearing, with music enjoyment differing for the level of hearing loss for some areas only.
E-mail: valerie.looi@canterbury.ac.nz
