Rachel Mcardle

Rachel Mcardle
Marino Institute of Education · University Library

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45
Publications
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2,450
Citations

Publications

Publications (45)
Article
Background The study examined follow-up rates for pursuing hearing health care (HHC) 6 to 8 months after participants self-administered one of three hearing screening methods: an automated method for testing of auditory sensitivity (AMTAS), a four-frequency pure-tone screener (FFS), or a digits-in-noise test (DIN), with and without the presentation...
Article
Objective To examine the effectiveness of the Listening and Communication Enhancement (LACE) program as a supplement to standard-of-care hearing aid intervention in a Veteran population. Design A multisite randomized controlled trial was conducted to compare outcomes following standard-of-care hearing aid intervention supplemented with (1) LACE tr...
Article
In developing the PB-50 word lists, J. P. Egan suggested five developmental principles, two of which were "equal average difficulty" and an "equal range of difficulty" among the lists (page 963). Egan was satisfied that each of the 20 PB-50 lists had equivalent ranges of recognition performances and that the lists produced the same average performa...
Article
Background: Several European countries have demonstrated successful use of telephone screening tests for auditory function. The screening test consists of spoken three-digit sequences presented in a noise background. The speech-to-noise ratios of the stimuli are determined by an adaptive tracking method that converges on the level required to achi...
Article
Background: For the past 50+ years, audiologists have been taught to measure the pure-tone thresholds at the interoctave frequencies when the thresholds at adjacent octave frequencies differ by 20 dB or more. Although this so-called 20 dB rule is logical when enhanced audiometric resolution is required, the origin of the rule is elusive, and a tho...
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Purpose To examine the role of compliance in the outcomes of computer-based auditory training with the Listening and Communication Enhancement (LACE) program in Veterans using hearing aids. Method The authors examined available LACE training data for 5 tasks (i.e., speech-in-babble, time compression, competing speaker, auditory memory, missing wor...
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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Research and Development convened a group of experts (authors on this guest editorial) to identify key rehabilitation research opportunities. Our first task was to examine the important themes of rehabilitation research to serve as a guide to the identification process. Rehabilitation research encom...
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The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence and characteristics of audiograms that are notched (1) at 4,000 Hz and (2) at 3,000, 4,000, and/or 6,000 Hz. Bilateral audiograms from 1,000,001 veterans were obtained from Department of Veterans Affairs archives; after "cleaning" algorithms were applied, 744,553 participants (mean age = 63.5...
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Full-text available
Background: Several self-report measures exist that target different aspects of outcomes for hearing aid use. Currently, no comprehensive questionnaire specifically assesses factors that may be important for differentiating outcomes pertaining to hearing aid style. Purpose: The goal of this work was to develop the Style Preference Survey (SPS),...
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Full-text available
Background: Despite evidence suggesting inaccuracy in the default fittings provided by hearing aid manufacturers, the use of probe-microphone measures for the verification of fitting accuracy is routinely used by fewer than half of practicing audiologists. Purpose: The present study examined whether self-perception of hearing aid benefit, as mea...
Article
Background: Patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), where one ear has an unaidable hearing loss and the other ear has normal or aidable hearing, often complain of difficulties understanding speech and localizing sound sources, and report a higher self-perceived hearing disability. Patients with SSD may benefit from using contralateral routing o...
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Full-text available
The Revised Speech Perception in Noise Test (R-SPIN; Bilger, 1984b) is composed of 200 target words distributed as the last words in 200 low-predictability (LP) and 200 high-predictability (HP) sentences. Four list pairs, each consisting of two 50-sentence lists, were constructed with the target word in a LP and HP sentence. Traditionally the R-SPI...
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The purpose was to determine if speech-recognition performances were the same when the speech level was fixed and the noise level varied as when the noise level was fixed and the speech level varied. A descriptive/quasi-experimental experiment was conducted with Lists 3 and 4 of the revised speech perception in noise (R-SPIN) test, which involves h...
Article
The decision to fit one or two hearing aids in individuals with binaural hearing loss has been debated for years. Although some 78% of U.S. hearing aid fittings are binaural (Kochkin , 2010), Walden and Walden (2005) presented data showing that 82% (23 of 28 patients) of their sample obtained significantly better speech recognition in noise scores...
Article
Chronic subjective tinnitus is a prevalent condition that causes significant distress to millions of Americans. Effective tinnitus treatments are urgently needed, but evaluating them is hampered by the lack of standardized measures that are validated for both intake assessment and evaluation of treatment outcomes. This work was designed to develop...
Article
The most common complaint of adults with hearing loss is understanding speech in noise. One class of masker that may be particularly useful in the assessment of speech-in-noise abilities is interrupted noise. Interrupted noise usually is a continuous noise that has been multiplied by a square wave that produces alternating intervals of noise and si...
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One of the most common complaints expressed by individuals with hearing loss is difficulty understanding speech when listening in background noise. This review paper highlights the importance of measuring speech recognition in noise and provides a guide to the basics of speech-in-noise testing. Topics included in this review paper along with releva...
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So that portions of the classic Miller, Heise, and Lichten (1951) study could be replicated, new recorded versions of the words and digits were made because none of the three common monosyllabic word lists (PAL PB-50, CID W-22, and NU-6) contained the 9 monosyllabic digits (1-10, excluding 7) that were used by Miller et al. It is well established t...
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To analyze the 50% correct recognition data that were from the Wilson et al (this issue) study and that were obtained from 24 listeners with normal hearing; also to examine whether acoustic, phonetic, or lexical variables can predict recognition performance for monosyllabic words presented in speech-spectrum noise. The specific variables are as fol...
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An abstract is unavailable. This article is available as HTML full text and PDF.
Article
Retest stability and retest reliability were assessed for the Words-in-Noise Test (WIN) in two experiments involving older listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. In Experiment 1, the 70-item WIN protocol was administered during two sessions 12 months apart to examine retest stability on a sample of 315 veterans from four VA Medical Centers. The...
Article
Retest stability and retest reliability were assessed for the Words-in-Noise Test (WIN) in two experiments involving older listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. In Experiment 1, the 70-item WIN protocol was administered during two sessions 12 months apart to examine retest stability on a sample of 315 veterans from four VA Medical Centers. The...
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Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine in listeners with normal hearing and listeners with sensorineural hearing loss the within- and between-group differences obtained with 4 commonly available speech-in-noise protocols. Method Recognition performances by 24 listeners with normal hearing and 72 listeners with sensorineural hearing loss...
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Full-text available
Hearing assistive technologies include listening, alerting, and/or signaling devices that use auditory, visual, and/or tactile modalities to augment communication and/or facilitate awareness of environmental sounds. The importance of hearing assistive technologies in the management of adults with hearing loss was recently acknowledged in an evidenc...
Article
There is a wide range of assessment techniques for tinnitus, but no consensus has developed concerning how best to measure either the presenting features of tinnitus or the effects of tinnitus treatments. Standardization of reliable and valid tinnitus measures would provide many advantages including improving the uniformity of diagnostic and screen...
Article
The purpose of this study was to determine the list equivalency of the 18 QuickSIN (Quick Speech in Noise test) lists. Individuals with normal hearing (n = 24) and with sensorineural hearing loss (n = 72) were studied. Mean recognition performances on the 18 lists by the listeners with normal hearing were 2.8 to 4.3 dB SNR (signal-to-noise ratio),...
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Both clinical and research findings support the effectiveness of frequency-modulated (FM) technology among individuals who continue to encounter significant communication problems despite the use of conventional hearing instruments. The use rate of FM devices throughout the nation, however, remains disappointingly low. The authors present a case of...
Article
The purpose of this mixed model design was to examine recognition performance differences when measuring speech recognition in multitalker babble on listeners with normal hearing (n = 36) and listeners with hearing loss (n = 72) utilizing stimulus of varying linguistic complexity (digits, words, and sentence materials). All listeners were administe...
Article
One of the major challenges in health care today is to ensure optimum outcomes for patients presenting with similar problems no matter where or from whom they receive their treatment. One of our objectives as clinicians, and as a profession, should be to capture and systemize the practices that lead to the best outcomes and eliminate those that res...
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This review presents a brief history of the evolution of speech audiometry from the 1800s to present day. The two-component aspect of hearing loss (audibility and distortion), which was formalized into a framework in past literature, is presented in the context of speech recognition. The differences between speech recognition in quiet and in backgr...
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Full-text available
Health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) instruments measure the impact of a disorder and treatment on several attributes that are thought to constitute the self-perceived health status of an individual. This tutorial reviews the conceptual framework of HRQoL, including the challenges associated with defining and measuring HRQoL, specifically as it a...
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Full-text available
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Disability Assessment Scale II (WHO-DAS II) is a generic health-status instrument firmly grounded in the WHO's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (WHO-ICF). As such, it assesses functioning for six domains: communication, mobility, self-care, interpersonal, life activities, and p...
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Full-text available
The World Health Organization's Disability Assessment Scale II (WHO-DAS II) is a generic health-status instrument that provides six domain scores and a total, aggregate score. Two of the domain scores, communication and participation, and the total score, have good validity, internal-consistency reliability, and test-retest stability in individuals...
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To examine short- and long-term subjective benefits of providing a counseling-oriented audiological rehabilitation (AR) program as an adjunct to hearing aid intervention for individuals with adult-onset hearing loss. One hundred six veterans (68 men and 38 women), fit binaurally with digitally programmable analog hearing aids, participated. The Com...
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Full-text available
The purpose of this study was to conduct a cost-utility analysis comparing two treatment approaches: (1) hearing aid use alone (HA) and (2) hearing aid use with short-term group postfitting audiologic rehabilitation (HA + AR). A total of 105 veterans, 67 males and 38 females, with at least a mild sensorineural hearing loss participated in this stud...
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Full-text available
The self-perceived hearing aid benefit of 38 participants was examined. Of the 38 subjects, 8 were found to have an auditory processing disorder as measured by the Dichotic Sentence Identification (DSI). When compared to the non-APD subjects, there were essentially no significant differences on the APHAB or COSI outcome measures. However, two of th...

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