Virtua l audiology education tools: A survey of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students

Due to global shifts at educational institutions from in-person courses to online formats caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the current study aimed to estimate whether currently available virtual audiology education tools are helpful for acquiring necessary audiology skills and knowledge from the perspective of both educators and students. Therefore, a remote survey was developed and distributed to faculty and students in undergraduate communication sciences disorders and graduate audiology programs. Although participation was somewhat limited, the trends observed in the survey results suggested that the majority of both educators and students found the subset of virtual tools easy to use, that these tools improved teaching methods and learning outcomes, and that these tools would likely be used again

Judgment of emotion in speech: Three-factor bar graphs for emotion categories "fear," "disgust," "sadness," "happiness," and "neutral" (Morgan & Ferguson, 2017)

<div>"Communication partners of individuals with hearing loss are often counseled and trained to 'speak clearly' to help their partners receive this intelligibility benefit and improve communication. However, audiology patients sometimes complain anecdotally of communication partners sounding angry when in fact these communication partners are only trying to speak clearly. In the present study, we investigated the basis for these complaints by examining whether listeners perceive anger or other emotional content when they listen to speech that has been spoken clearly."</div><div><br></div><div>In this study, the authors investigated the emotion perceived by young listeners with normal hearing (YNH listeners) and older adults with hearing impairment (OHI listeners) when listening to speech produced conversationally or in a clear speaking style. </div><div><br></div><div>In the article, the authors focus primarily on speech receiving a judgment of "anger" from the participants. Here, they present the results of other categories of emotion that were included: "fear" (<b>S1</b>), "disgust" (<b>S2</b>), "sadness" (<b>S3</b>), "happiness" (<b>S4</b>), and "neutral" (<b>S5</b>). </div><div><br></div><div>Morgan, S. D., & Ferguson, S. H. (2017). Judgments of emotion in clear and conversational speech by young adults with normal hearing and older adults with hearing impairment. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60, </i>2271–2280<i>.</i> https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_JSLHR-H-16-0264</div

Perceived Anger in Clear and Conversational Speech: Contributions of Age and Hearing Loss

A previous investigation demonstrated differences between younger adult normal-hearing listeners and older adult hearing-impaired listeners in the perceived emotion of clear and conversational speech. Specifically, clear speech sounded angry more often than conversational speech for both groups, but the effect was smaller for the older listeners. These listener groups differed by two confounding factors, age (younger vs. older adults) and hearing status (normal vs. impaired). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the contributions of aging and hearing loss to the reduced perception of anger in older adults with hearing loss. We investigated perceived anger in clear and conversational speech in younger adults with and without a simulated age-related hearing loss, and in older adults with normal hearing. Younger adults with simulated hearing loss performed similarly to normal-hearing peers, while normal-hearing older adults performed similarly to hearing-impaired peers, suggesting that aging was the primary contributor to the decreased anger perception seen in previous work. These findings confirm reduced anger perception for older adults compared to younger adults, though the significant speaking style effect&mdash;regardless of age and hearing status&mdash;highlights the need to identify methods of producing clear speech that is emotionally neutral or positive