A two-year follow-up examination of a behavioural treatment approach to hearing tactics

Twenty elderly hearing impaired patients participated in a two-year follow-up study on the effects of behavioural treatment aimed at increasing coping with hearing impairment. Subjects who had received treatment were compared with untreated controls using the Hearing Coping Assessment (HCA) and the Communication Strategies Subscale of the Communication Profile for the Hearing Impaired (CPHI-CSS). The group treatment package included applied relaxation, video self-modelling, exposure, information, and the teaching of hearing tactics. Results showed some effects in favour of the treatment on the HCA at post-treatment, but no differences at follow-up. The results on the CPHI-CSS using pre-treatment HCA scores as covariate showed significant multivariate effects on the subscales measuring maladaptive behaviours, non-verbal strategies, and on the CPHI-CSS total score. No significant multivariate effect was found for the verbal strategies subscale. As no pre-treatment data were available, results on the CPHI-CSS should be interpreted with caution. Overall, the results from this study give some support for the implementation of behavioural treatment in audiological rehabilitation.