Communicative skills of the very old in old people's homes

Abstract

Lindeman HE, Platenburg—Gits FA. Communicative skills of the very old in old people's homes. Acta Otolaryngol (Stockh) 1991; Suppl. 476: 232—238.

Difficulties in understanding speech can increase progressively from 60 years of age. This means that by 70 years of age the handicap becomes quite clear and for those over 70 it is unmistakable. One assumes that the elderly have less need to communicate but the opposite is true: because of the often enforced decrease in physical activity, compensation must be looked for in the form of social contacts. As part of a research project on noise emission levels, auditory system function and satisfaction with living accommodation, 111 elderly or extremely elderly (average age approx. 85; spread 67—96 years of age) living in seven nursing homes throughout The Netherlands were given an audiological investigation. With the aid of free—field speech audiometry, participants were scored for the intensity of the signal (S) needed to achieve 100% sentence intelligibility in three situations. The three situations were created by simultaneously offering artificial background noise (ABN): ABN=60 dB represented the common room, ABN=45 dB their personal living accomodation and ABN=0 dB was an imitation of silence. For 100 of the participants, there was always a speech intensity, situated in the 40—80 dB range, at which the listener scored 100% for the three ABN intensities and there was a significant correlation with losses in the pure—tone audiogram (PTA at 1, 2 and 3 kHz). With the gradual increase in presbycusis, a certain level of social invalidity occurs which in turn makes demands on the speaker (articulation) and the acoustics of the living space if the (very) elderly is to continue to participate normally in everyday life.

Key Words:

• presbycusis
• speech audio—metry
• intelligibility
• social life