Personality and experimentally simulated hearing loss

Previous studies have suggested that personality factors may affect responses of the normally hearing and those with organic or non-organic hearing losses in audiological assessments. Audiometrically naive (n = 15) and sophisticated (n = 15) subjects who took part in a study of experimentally simulated hearing loss completed the Eysenck Personality Inventory in order that the relationship between personality dimensions and responses on audiometric tests could be investigated for all subjects and for males and females separately. The finding that more anxious males were less able to match pure tone losses with losses for speech suggests that differences in responses of male and female subjects to audiometric tests should be investigated, particularly in view of the preponderance of male subjects in studies of nonorganic hearing loss. A relationship between extraversion and correct speech responses on retest for the sophisticated subjects was thought to reflect abandonment of their strategies in the difficult task of matching hearing loss for speech with that for pure tones. No discernible trends were evident from the remaining analyses.