To be able to feel a sense of belonging, people need to have the possibility to take part of the information from the society. Hearing-impaired don?t have the same possibility as hearing people when they want to take part of the information, therefore they don?t get the same benefit. This contributes to a feeling of not belonging and a sense of limitation in different social occasions. Therefore the society needs to be accessible to everyone regardless disability.

This essay investigates the relation between ?usage? and ?hearing? of dialectal words and expressions in the Ryukyu islands, Japan, in this case words and expressions from a mix of Ryukyuan and standard Japanese, so called uchinaa-yamatoguchi. A survey was conducted and in the questionnaires the respondents were asked to fill in the degree of usage and hearing of each word and expression, consisting of three alternatives each; use often, use seldom and never used - hear often, hear seldom and never heard.My findings show a stable pattern in the relation between usage and hearing, where the usage is relatively low compared to hearing in almost every case. Among the most frequently used ones, one could find words and expressions connected to food, festivals, type of person, adjectives, adverb and animals etc..

A pilot study conducted on four patients, which we received from the Sahlgrenska University Hospital, who were all potential candidates for a cochlear implant. We fitted our test subjects with a pair of frequency compressing hearing aids called Phonak Naida V SP during the study and let them evaluate them for about seven weeks. Measurements made with monosyllabic words throughout the study showed significant differences in speech perception (p?0.05) compared to their regular hearing aids in 3 out of 4 cases. De-activation of the frequency transposed function showed significant decreases in 3 out of 4 cases compared to when it was activated.All test subjects were satisfied with the new hearing aids and chose to keep using them at the end of the study..

Ear disease and hearing loss in preschool children can be difficult to discover and diagnose. This paper investigates ear disease in 20 children controls from 1 to 5 years of age. The aim of the study was to map prevalence and incidence for ear disease, and prevalence of hearing loss in a group of children.Twenty children wide aged 1, 1½, 3 and 5 were included and investigated according to a set protocol with psychoacoustic tests, tympanometry, ear microscopy and a parental questionnaire. The majority of the children could be evaluated by age adequate psychoacoustic tests and otoscopy. Tympanometry was the investigation method that was most difficult to perform.

The purpose of this thesis is to get an improved understanding of what the bases for relevance are, when people in real information need situations make relevance judgements. In order to meet this purpose, an investigation based on research literature is performed. Four types of relevance are investigated: topical or subject relevance, cognitive relevance or pertinence, situational relevance or utility, and socio-cognitive relevance. The investigation also deals with users relevance criteria identified in fourteen empirical studies, in which the users are adults and engaged in oral, textual, and multimedia information retrieval. Finally, the connections between the user criteria found and the types of relevance are discussed.

Abstract The present study examined if early deaf people and people with severe hearing loss perceive visual information differently than hearing people. An experiment was conducted with eight deaf participants and eight participants with normal hearing. The participants were between the ages of 18-74 years. The participants were asked to look at fifteen different images portraying manipulated illusions, and then assess if the images were of the same size. Subsequently another image depicting a different illusion with a face hidden in it was presented to the participants.

The present study deals with task-oriented conversations between a person with hearing loss and a relative or friend. The purpose was to investigate how the participants in the task-oriented context co-construct understanding, and to focus on different kind of repair strategies that the participants may use to make the hearing loss relevant in the conversation. The method used was Conversation Analysis (CA). The material consisted of eight videotaped task-oriented conversations between a person with hearing loss and their significant other. Altogether eight persons participated in the study ? four of them had a hearing loss and the other four had normal hearing.

A hearing loss may affect the identity development and participation among adolescents. To understand adolescents with hearing loss in modern society, it?s of great importance to ascertain how identity- and participation processes occur in new areas, such as the internet.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate what research shown regarding identity development among adolescents with hearing loss and whether social processes on the internet may influence the participation of this group.Method: A literature review was conducted to obtain a cohesive framework of research about participation processes and identity development among adolescents. Included articles have been published 1995-2015.Results: The results show the importance of the individual?s identification with the surrounding.

Abstract The present study examined if early deaf people and people with severe hearing loss perceive visual information differently than hearing people. An experiment was conducted with eight deaf participants and eight participants with normal hearing. The participants were between the ages of 18-74 years. The participants were asked to look at fifteen different images portraying manipulated illusions, and then assess if the images were of the same size. Subsequently another image depicting a different illusion with a face hidden in it was presented to the participants.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether cannabis use can affect cognitive functions. The method that was chosen to answer the purpose of the study was a general literature review. Article search occurred in the databases PsycINFO and PubMed. Nine articles were selected based on the study?s inclusion criteria.

This project started when LIC Audio AB wanted help with development of a hearing aid for public rooms. The problem is that a lot of people suffer from some sort of hearing impairment. In places with a lot of people and background noise the problem becomes bigger and the sound seems to flow together. During the project we found the solution for the problem in the shape of a headphone. The headphone receives a signal from a preinstalled hearing loop.

The study emanates from the national quality registry for persons with severe and profound hearing impairment. The aim was to examine possible differences between signing deaf and adults with acquired severe hearing loss, with reference to self-assessed problems, how the hearing loss influences daily life.In total 234 adults aged 30-90 years were included (128 women, 106 men). In the registry, there are background variables and questions that the patients have answered. The results, indicated on a visual analogue scale (VAS) from 0-100, from a question ?To which extent does your hearing loss at present influence your life?? were analysed.The study was performed by pooling the results of VAS and dividing the patients into signing deaf and those with acquired severe hearing loss, and in age groups 30-60 and 61-90 years.

Background: More than half of the elderly (65-84 years) in Sweden have problems with hearing. In some studiesit?s discussed if age related hearing loss or presbyacusis is a part of natural aging or if it depends on underlyingfactors.The purpose of this literature study was to analyse scientific papers which illustrate correlations between lessknown underlying factors and presbyacusis, defined from psychoacoustic and/or neurofysiological tests.Material and method; Literature study where scientific papers, relevant to the purpose of the study and thequestions at issue were found in the database PubMed.The result shows that cardiovascular disease, hormones, diet and drugs have an influence on presbyacusis. Thehealth condition of the individual and their lifestyle matters, likewise estrogen which according to the results of 2studies has a protective effect on hearing.Conclusion; The studies show that heart attack and high systolic blood pressure in women have a correlation topresbyacusis, but not in men, - the hormone estrogen, - some vitamins, antioxidants and diet have a protectiveeffect on hearing and studies show that smoking and alcohol have negative effects..

Audionomprogrammet.

The project has been performed in a close collaboration with Hörsam who works in the field of hearing technology. In a first meeting with the company, the Project group was showed a few existing storage boxes for hearing aids. The company thought they were unnecessarily large with plenty of unused space and wanted a new, smarter solution to be developed.The project began with user studies in which audiologists, maintenance technicians, future users and others were interviewed. The purpose was to obtain their views on today's storage boxes and to find out how well the users maintained their hearing aids. It proved to be a large lack of knowledge regarding the management of hearing aids within the users.