The impact of auditory attention disorders on the quality of life of elderly people

Katarzyna Antosiak-Cyrak, Ewa Koprowiak

Abstract


Introduction: In addition to prolonging the length of life, one of the challenges in modern human life sciences is to improve the quality of life in the elderly, who are often facing numerous crises at their age. Thus, there is a growing interest in studies aimed at analyzing quality of life with a view to identifying the needs of older people and improving the way the elderly function in society. The aim of the present study is to investigate the characteristics of hearing in elderly people and their views on the relationship between hearing and quality of life. As such, 2 research questions were asked: 1. What is the declared quality of life of older people? 2. Is there a connection between hearing and quality of life?
Materials and methods: The study involved 34 people aged 60–90 years with an average age of 73.77 years. The participants were divided into 2 age groups: early ageing (60–74 years old, 46.4%) and late ageing (75–90 years old, 53.6%). More than half of the respondents (59.3%) were in a diagnosed disability class, of which 31.2% were in the 1st disability class, 50.0% in the 2nd disability class, and 18.8% in the 3rd disability class. None of the respondents were registered in a disability class due to an audtory disability. Only 4 people (14.8%) declared having a hearing aid. The following research methods were used: a diagnostic survey with the use of the Quality of Life Questionnaire by Straś- Romanowska et al., and auditory attention diagnosis with the use of Tomatis® Listening Test System (TLTS).
Results: The results of the study revealed a directly proportional relationship between quality of life and the speech and emotional ranges of sound perception. This means that a loss in air conduction hearing increases significantly with higher levels of global quality of life (p < 0.03; p < 0.005). In the motor hearing range, an inversely proportional relationship was observed, i.e. sound perception at a lower decibel level can be noted along with higher global quality of life and quality of life in its psychosocial dimension.
Conclusions: The study results confirm the hypothesis that the perceived quality of life among the elderly is generally at a satisfactory level. The greatest changes take place in the psychosocial dimension during early aging and psychophysical dimensionduring late aging.


Keywords


quality of life; auditory processing disorders; older individuals; aging; hearing loss

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.21164/pomjlifesci.771

Copyright (c) 2021 Katarzyna Antosiak-Cyrak, Ewa Koprowiak

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