Abstract

Two groups of college students rated their perceptions/feelings toward older persons with hearing loss on a semantic differential scale using 25 polar adjectives. Immediately after listening to an audiotape designed to enhance empathy (Dancer & Keiser, 1980) or to the commercially available "How We Hear," which is merely informative in nature, the groups rated their perceptions/feelings again. The greater shifts in the ratings of the group listening to the empathy tape led to the hypothesis that this tape is more effective than "How We Hear" in changing attitudes toward hearing-impaired elderly persons.

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