Objectives. This study examined the relationship between acceptable noise level (ANL) and personality. ANL is the difference between a person's most comfortable level for speech and the loudest level of background noise they are willing to accept while listening to speech. Design. Forty young adults with normal hearing participated. ANLs were measured and two personality tests (Big Five Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) were administered. Results. The analysis revealed a correlation between ANL and the openness and conscientious personality dimensions from the Big Five Inventory; no correlation emerged between ANL and the Myers-Briggs personality types. Conclusions. Lower ANLs are correlated with full-time hearing aid use and the openness personality dimension; higher ANLs are correlated with part-time or hearing aid nonuse and the conscientious personality dimension. Current data suggest that those more open to new experiences may accept more noise and possibly be good hearing aid candidates, while those more conscientious may accept less noise and reject hearing aids, based on their unwillingness to accept background noise. Knowing something about a person's personality type may help audiologists determine if their patients will likely be good candidates for hearing aids.

This study investigated the relationship between listener loudness tolerance and listener acceptable noise level (ANL). Twenty-five normal hearing adults completed loudness tolerance and acceptable noise level measures. Loudness tolerance was measured using a scaling technique. The acceptable noise levels were calculated from a procedure designed to quantify a listener's willingness to accept background noise while listening to speech. Pearson correlation confirmed that loudness tolerance and acceptable noise levels are not related.

Mismatch negativity and the P300 have been investigated as electrophysiological indices of behavioral auditory discrimination of duration. Using an oddball paradigm, responses were evoked to stimuli that had been behaviorally demonstrated to be either perceptible or imperceptible. The results indicated P300 events were present with the perceptible contrast but absent for the imperceptible contrast with all participants, while mismatch negativities were present in approximately 80 and 20% of participants to the perceptible and imperceptible contrasts, respectively. The present study extended the findings by applying the same paradigm to the discrimination of spectral and amplitude contrasts. 10 young adults with normal hearing were participants. Assuming that auditory assessment should involve representation and processing in all acoustic domains (i.e., temporal/duration, spectral/frequency, and amplitude/intensity), the effects seen with temporal contrasts were predicted to be similar for spectral and amplitude contrasts. The findings generally illustrated that the P300 was more accurate than the mismatch negativity in reflecting behavioral discrimination. Together, these studies challenge the use of mismatch negativity as an electrophysiological correlate for behavioral discrimination of auditory perceptible contrasts.

Results: Responses on the IOI-HA for adults in the current study were comparable to reported results from other countries. Interview responses from over half of participants fell into four broad areas: speech (in quiet and noise), traffic sounds, listening to music, and birds. Conclusions: Nicaraguan responses on the IOI-HA were similar to previous reports from other countries. However, it was difficult for patients to complete the questionnaire independently, supporting the need for a culturally relevant assessment tool. Based on the literature review and the responses of participants, a hearing aid benefit tool was constructed for use with amplification recipients in Nicaragua.

The present study was a follow-up investigation to a previous study exploring the relationship between listeners' loudness tolerance and listeners' acceptable noise level among normally hearing adults. The present study compared the same two measures, but data were obtained from listeners with hearing loss; 12 adults with sensorineural hearing loss participated in a loudness tolerance measure using a scaling technique initially established for setting hearing aid output limits, in addition to an acceptable noise level measure. The acceptable noise level procedure used in this study quantified the listeners' acceptance of background noise while listening to speech. As with the research involving listeners with normal hearing, the Pearson correlation procedure indicated a lack of any statistically significant correlation between the two measures.