ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To examine how well hearing aid orientation (HAO) content is remembered immediately and 1 month after the HAO, and whether the ability to remember this information differs as a function of the audiologist providing the information, patient's age, degree of hearing loss, and prior knowledge of hearing aids. METHOD: A convenience sample of 100 older adults completed a multiple-choice test of hearing aid knowledge immediately following the HAO and 1 month later. Covariate and regression analyses were used to address the study purpose. RESULTS: On average, participants recognized 74% of the information immediately following HAO and 78% at 1 month. Hearing loss was associated with declining recognition for hearing aid use and care information immediately following HAO, whereas prior knowledge was associated with successful recognition. Participants who recognized more HAO content immediately also remembered more at 1 month. A difference in recognition of hearing aid information based on audiologist was suggested immediately following HAO, but there were no differences at 1 month. Ability to recognize HAO content was not related to age of participants. CONCLUSIONS: On average, participants recognized approximately 75% of the HAO content, which is encouraging from a clinical standpoint, providing support for the efficacy of the HAO and the time audiologists spend in completing it. Moreover, recognition of HAO content improved when tested at 1 month, suggesting audiologists may expect their patients to be aware of a majority of hearing aid use and care information following the hearing aid trial period.
Subject(s)
Correction of Hearing Impairment , Hearing Aids/psychology , Hearing Loss/rehabilitation , Memory , Patient Education as Topic , Age Factors , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Auditory Perception , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Knowledge , Male , Middle Aged , Patient Education as Topic/methods , Patient Education as Topic/standards , Patient Satisfaction , Pilot Projects , Psychoacoustics , Surveys and QuestionnairesABSTRACT
PURPOSE: A hallmark of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is disruption in theory-of-mind development, including the understanding of false beliefs. Previous studies have typically assessed the development of first- and second-order false belief concepts in ASD, with tasks primarily emphasizing physical causality and logical inferencing. The present study investigated how preadolescents and adolescents with ASD performed on false belief tasks that included social inferencing of psychological states as well as logical inferencing of physical states. METHOD: Two categories of tasks were administered: four traditional logical inferencing tasks and four social inferencing tasks specifically developed for this study. In addition, a prompt hierarchy was included to ascertain if performance on both task types improved. Participants were 45 children and adolescents primarily selected from three urban school districts: 15 adolescents with a previous diagnosis of ASD (ASD group); 15 typically developing children matched for age, gender, and ethnicity (CA group); and 15 typically developing children matched for language age, gender, and ethnicity (LA group). RESULTS: Three findings were pertinent. First, the CA group performed at higher levels than did the LA group and the ASD group on both task sets. Second, although the CA and the LA groups performed equally well on both the logical and the social inferencing tasks, the ASD group performed better on the social inferencing tasks. Finally, the prompt hierarchy significantly improved overall task performance for the ASD and LA groups. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: These findings indicate that task type, variations in vocabulary ability, and the provision of support influenced performance on the false belief tasks.
