Emotional prosody perception in presbycusis patients after auditory rehabilitation

Perception of emotion plays a major role in social interaction. Studies have shown that hearing loss and aging degrade emotional recognition. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate the benefit of first-time hearing aids (HA) for emotional prosody perception in presbycusis patients. Secondary objectives comprised comparison with normal-hearing subjects, and assessment of the impact of demographic and audiologic factors. To assess HA impact, 29 subjects with presbycusis were included. They were tested without HA and 1 month after starting to use HA. A test with emotional hearing stimuli (Montreal Affective Voice test: MAV) was performed at various intensities (50, 65 and 80dB SPL). Patients’ experience was evaluated on the Profile of Emotional Competence questionnaire, before and after HA fitting. Results were compared with those of 29 normal-hearing subjects. Auditory rehabilitation did not significantly improve MAV results (P>0.005), or subjective questionnaire results (P>0.005). Scores remained lower than those of normal-hearing subjects (P