Presbyacusis is a hearing loss combined with functional auditory decline due to the aging process. AIM: The aim of this study is to characterize verbal and nonverbal sound interaction aspects in elderly individuals with and without hearing loss by means of Binaural Fusion Test, Sound Localization Test at five directions and Pediatric Sentence Identification (PSI), taking into consideration each procedure and hearing loss magnitude. STUDY DESIGN: Clinical study with transversal cohort. MATERIAL AND METHOD: A number of 110 elderly individuals, aged between 60 to 85 years, with normal hearing and with symmetric neurossensorial hearing loss up to moderately severe hearing impairment participated in this study. The common auditory behavior for all the selected tests was nominated as interaction. The analysis was performed by means of a single procedure and also based on audiometric magnitude. RESULTS: There were more individuals that failed the Binaural Fusion Test. The procedures that showed significant statistical dependency on the audiometric magnitude groups were Sound Localization Test, Temporal Lateralization Test and PSI-MCI (-10) Test. CONCLUSION: Elderly individuals present difficulty in the binaural interaction process when the auditory information is not complete. The magnitude of the hearing loss interfered specially in the localization auditory behavior.
hearing; auditory perception; aged; hearing tests
