Hearing is considered to be the most important sense for the communication between people. Several studies have shown that hearing loss can lead to deterioration in quality of life, reduced social activities, feelings of alienation and hence the increasing incidence of depression symptoms.An early audiological rehabilitation is a prerequisite for proper communication among people with hearing loss. Knowledge has been shown to be of great importance and structured learning and individually targeted approach can be expected to facilitate the audiological rehabilitation.The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an educational effort for people with hearing loss where the effort was made in the distance within the audiological rehabilitation and was followed-up by professional phone support, through a randomized controlled study.The study group consisted of 69 hearing aid users who were randomized by an independent person into two groups, an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group (n = 33) had access to the book "When the sounds are weaker - on hearing and hearing aids". The group received weekly topic-based information related to the different chapters of the book, in five rounds.

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.

The aim of this study was to examine language abilities and their correlation to reading comprehension in 12 year old children with mild tomoderate sensorineural hearing impairment. Eight children with mild to moderate hearing impairment were tested in listening comprehension, grammatical comprehension, receptive vocabulary, phonological short termmemory, word finding, semantic relations, reading comprehension, comprehension of written words and decoding of words and non-words. The results were compared to results from a comparison group. The children with hearing impairment had significantly lower results in phonological short term memory and decoding. No significant difference was found between groups in reading comprehension.

Background: Bone anchored hearing system is a surgically implantable system for treatment ofindividuals with hearing loss. The Softband is intended for patients who can benefit from a boneanchored hearing system but who are not yet suitable for implant surgery.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether an adhesive bone conductor, Adjoin, canbe used as an alternative to Softband.Material and Method: Twenty adult subjects with normal hearing participated in the study.Measurement of functional gain and speech intelligibility was performed with Softband and Adjoinwhich then were compared. A questionnaire was answered by the participants after the measurementsthat treated their subjective experiences with each option.Results: The objective measurements yielded no overall difference between Softband and Adjoin forthe group studied. The subjective results showed differences in the perceived comfort as well as whichof the two bone conductors that would be preferred to use in everyday life, with Adjoin being thepreferred option. No difference was detected on participants perceived gain, sound quality and speechintelligibility.Conclusion: Based on the measured results, Adjoin seems to be a suitable alternative to Softband.However, there are questions about how Adjoin works with long-term use..

ABSTRACTBackground: After general anesthesia the cognitive ability is temporarily impaired. Cognitive recovery is necessary for the patient to be able to assimilate the information that she / he gets postoperatively. It also increases the patient safety. There are few methods to estimate and assess the patient's cognitive recovery before and after anesthesia. The purpose of this study is to test the usefulness of the instrument PQRS and to assess the patients cognitive recovery after anesthesia.

Research shows that people with burnout experience a high degree of impairments in a range of cognitive functions including memory, attention and concentration. The overall aim of the present study is to investigate whether there is a correlation between subjective estimates of cognition and cognitive performance with objective tests in people with burnout with a focus on working memory and executive functions. Three specific questions were addressed; First, what cognitive problems are described and to what degree? Second, is the performance of executive and working memory tests related to self-reported cognitive problems? Third, are the self-reported cognitive problems related to measures of psychological distress? The study included 77 patients, 65 women and 12 men, with a mean age of 43.48 years. The results show that patients with burnout perceive themselves as having significantly impaired cognition in everyday life, which is clearly evident on the basis of the self-assessment forms PRMQ and CFQ.

Objective: From the patient?s perspective describe communication difficulties, which can arise, and how they are handled in their contact with public health care and illustrate their needs of communication.Method: A study of literature was carried out to receive a background and an insight in previous research concerning the subject area. Twelve women with hearing loss was asked to complete a questionnaire, with open questions, regarding communication difficulties in health care situations.Sample: For the literature review, scientific papers were selected via the database, PubMed using relevant keywords. Seven were selected for closer review. For the survey study twelve women were asked to participate which ten of those responded.Results: The study of literature shows that communication difficulties occur in public health care between patients with hearing loss and the nursing staff.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the attitudes of deaf and hear-impaired people towards libraries, information, and culture. The issues are: What are the attitudes of the informants towards libraries and culture? What do reference group theory and the theory of information access-/avoidance implicate concerning the information behaviour of the informants? In-depth interviews with five deaf and hear-impaired university students have been carried out in this qualitative study. The world of deaf and hear-impaired people is presented as well as a survey of political guidelines to make, for example, libraries and theatres more available to disabled people. The research overview analyses scholarly studies on deaf and hear-impaired people.

Purpose: To examine the hearing environment for tattoo artists regarding occupational noiseand to see whether tattoo artists are exposed to hazardous noise according to Swedish WorkEnvironment Authority regulations. Method: Using a dosimeter we measured a total ofseven sessions of approximately one hour on seven different subjects, located on five studiosin Gothenburg. As a complement we did also hand out surveys based on twelve questions toexamine habits, experienced sound environment and to see if there were any hearing relatedpatterns. Results:. Sound level measurements showed that the lower exposure action valueLpAeq,8h 80 dB(A) in one case was reached if applied to the average working time of sixhours.

KKS includes difficulties hearing speech in background noise although results from pure toneaudiometry are normal. The condition is also called ?Obscure Audiotory Dysfunction? and?Auditory disability with normal hearing?. KKS affects a heterogeneous group. We believethere is a need for synthesis of existing studies to acknowledge the condition in Sweden toimprove rehabilitation for the affected individuals.

Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties and Their Language and Cognitive AbilitiesA Comparison with Children with a Cochlear ImplantAbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the cognitive abilities that are important for reading in children with reading disabilities, children with a cochlear implantation and typically developed children. 64 children aged 10-12 years participated in the study. To answer the question at issue we used the following tests: Block Design from WISC III, PPVT III, TOWRE, SL 40 and a few chosen tests out of the SIPS battery. On tests of the lexical access children with reading disabilities performed at the same level as hearing children, while the children with a cochlear implant performed significantly lower. Test of the phonological and complex working memory showed that children with reading disabilities performed significantly higher than children with a cochlear implant, but at the same time lower than typically developed children on the test of phonological working memory.

Adjustment to acquired hearing loss can be understood as a process of learning and change where the point of departure is the subjective apppraisal of a person?s hearing loss in a social and cultural context. The aim of the study was to describe women?s thoughts, emotions and actions prior to audiological rehabilitation, since these are considered important for the ongoing process of adjustment and for the planning of rehabilitation. A phenomenographical approach was used in order to describe the variation in the women?s attitudes before attending rehabilitation.

This study investigates verbal and visuospatial memory strategies used by individuals with perceptual or cognitive disabilities. The groups concentrated on in this study are deaf individuals who are native sign language users and individuals with dyslexia. The study comprises an experiment and an in-depth study in which a pre-test and a questionnaire were used. Nine deaf signers, two persons with dyslexia and 12 persons without any perceptual or cognitive constraints participated. Of these 23 persons, seven were selected to take part in the in-depth study.

Objective: From the patient?s perspective describe communication difficulties, which can arise, and how they are handled in their contact with public health care and illustrate their needs of communication.Method: A study of literature was carried out to receive a background and an insight in previous research concerning the subject area. Twelve women with hearing loss was asked to complete a questionnaire, with open questions, regarding communication difficulties in health care situations.Sample: For the literature review, scientific papers were selected via the database, PubMed using relevant keywords. Seven were selected for closer review. For the survey study twelve women were asked to participate which ten of those responded.Results: The study of literature shows that communication difficulties occur in public health care between patients with hearing loss and the nursing staff.

A speech-based material that early can assess a child's hearing is needed to provide an indication of a hearing impaired child's language development. Being able to identify and discriminate between different sounds is a requirement for interpreting speech. Hearing assessments that examine speech perception can therefore, unlike, for example, pure tone audiometry, examine a hearing impaired child's perceptual language skills and provide a basis for intervention.The purpose of this work is to evaluate a new auditory material on 3-year-old children. The auditory material is based on the Ling-6-sounds and the main question was which of the sounds in the test were adequate for test of discrimination. Furthermore, it was investigated how the test works with children aged 3:0?3:11 years and how age and gender affect the result.Twenty-four children aged 3:0?3:11 years were tested using a computer based test.