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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Valence ratings of recorded media for adults with and without hearing loss
Haiping Huang1, Anne-Charlotte J Belloeil2, Todd A Ricketts1,3
1Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Objectives:
This study evaluated valence ratings in response to recorded media under a variety of listening situations.
Design And Study Sample:
Younger adults with normal hearing (n = 20), older adults with typical hearing (n = 20), and older adults with hearing loss (n = 20) provided ratings of valence (the degree to which they felt pleasant) for audio-only (Experiment 1) and audiovisual (Experiment 2) recorded media clips. Clips varied by dialogue-to-background ratio and loudspeaker configuration (television, stereo, surround sound).
Results:
In both experiments, older listeners with hearing loss provided significantly lower valence ratings than their typical hearing peers, but only when the surround sound loudspeakers were used or when the dialogue-to-background ratio was +7 dB. Older listeners provided lower valence ratings when the loudspeaker was either stereo or surround sound or when dialogue-to-background ratio was +12 dB, but only when visual cues were not available.
Conclusion:
Older adults with hearing loss exhibit disrupted ratings of valence to recorded media. The effect could be mitigated with improved dialogue-to-background ratios of television shows and movies, but not with surround sound systems.
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