Assessment of the Social Adequacy of Hearing

Overview

Hearing serves in the first place as a way of transmitting information, as a means ofcommunication. Unimpaired hearing is thus not characterized by a normal threshold audiogrambut by an unimpaired possibility of exchange of acoustic information, unimpared verbal communi-cation. By speech, its perception and understanding social interhuman relations are created.Therefore hearing exists above all as a factor of the creation and development of interhuman socialrelations.The state of hearing can be assessed either as regards quantity and quality of perception or withregard to its social communication function. Quality = implies the range of hearing (frequency) andquantity = the intensity. Both are examined by means of the threshold tone audiogram. Thecommunication capacity of hearing is examined by verbal audiometry. The ihsocial adequacy ofhearinglr is assessed by a calculation from the verbal audiogram and the result expresses thepercentage by which the impaired hearing interferes with the communicating possibilitis of thepatient. The result indicates immediately and sufficiently accurately the possibilities of the impai-red hearing in relation to communication, establishment of social relations and makes also accurateand unequivocal evaluation of the social communication gain after correction with a hearing aidpossible.

Key words:
hearing, assessment, verbal audiometry.