Millions of Americans experience some degree of hearing loss. The Social Security Administration (SSA) operates programs that provide cash disability benefits to people with permanent impairments like hearing loss, if they can show that their impairments meet stringent SSA criteria and their earnings are below an SSA threshold. The National Research Council convened an expert committee at the request of the SSA to study the issues related to disability determination for people with hearing loss. This volume is the product of that study. Hearing Loss: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits reviews current knowledge about hearing loss and its measurement and treatment, and provides an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the current processes and criteria. It recommends changes to strengthen the disability determination process and ensure its reliability and fairness. The book addresses criteria for selection of pure tone and speech tests, guidelines for test administration, testing of hearing in noise, special issues related to testing children, and the difficulty of predicting work capacity from clinical hearing test results. It should be useful to audiologists, otolaryngologists, disability advocates, and others who are concerned with people who have hearing loss.

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain.[1] Only acoustic waves that have frequencies lying between about 20 Hz and 20 kHz, the audio frequency range, elicit an auditory percept in humans. In air at atmospheric pressure, these represent sound waves with wavelengths of 17 meters (56 ft) to 1.7 centimeters (0.67 in). Sound waves above 20 kHz are known as ultrasound and are not audible to humans. Sound waves below 20 Hz are known as infrasound. Different animal species have varying hearing ranges. Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gasses, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound, and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician, while someone working in the field of acoustical engineering may be called an acoustical engineer.[2] An audio engineer, on the other hand, is concerned with the recording, manipulation, mixing, and reproduction of sound. Applications of acoustics are found in almost all aspects of modern society, subdisciplines include aeroacoustics, audio signal processing, architectural acoustics, bioacoustics, electro-acoustics, environmental noise, musical acoustics, noise control, psychoacoustics, speech, ultrasound, underwater acoustics, and vibration.

The Auditory System and Human Sound-Localization Behavior provides a comprehensive account of the full action-perception cycle underlying spatial hearing. It highlights the interesting properties of the auditory system, such as its organization in azimuth and elevation coordinates. Readers will appreciate that sound localization is inherently a neuro-computational process (it needs to process on implicit and independent acoustic cues). The localization problem of which sound location gave rise to a particular sensory acoustic input cannot be uniquely solved, and therefore requires some clever strategies to cope with everyday situations. The reader is guided through the full interdisciplinary repertoire of the natural sciences: not only neurobiology, but also physics and mathematics, and current theories on sensorimotor integration (e.g. Bayesian approaches to deal with uncertain information) and neural encoding. - Quantitative, model-driven approaches to the full action-perception cycle of sound-localization behavior and eye-head gaze control - Comprehensive introduction to acoustics, systems analysis, computational models, and neurophysiology of the auditory system - Full account of gaze-control paradigms that probe the acoustic action-perception cycle, including multisensory integration, auditory plasticity, and hearing impaired

Musical Sound, Instruments, and Equipment' offers a basic understanding of sound, musical instruments and music equipment, geared towards a general audience and non-science majors. The book begins with an introduction of the fundamental properties of sound waves, and the perception of the characteristics of sound. The relation between intensity and loudness, and the relation between frequency and pitch are discussed. The basics of propagation of sound waves, and the interaction of sound waves with objects and structures of various sizes are introduced. Standing waves, harmonics and resonance are explained in simple terms, using graphics that provide a visual understanding.

This book is designed to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level. The focus on behaviour and empiricism has produced a text that is better organized, has fewer chapters, and is somewhat shorter than many of the leading books. The beginning of each section includes learning objectives; throughout the body of each section are key terms in bold followed by their definitions in italics; key takeaways, and exercises and critical thinking activities end each section.