It is so commonly reported that it is almost a truism to say that conversation difficulty is the major site of activity limitation/participation restriction for adults who have acquired hearing impairment (HI). As a result, rehabilitative activity in audiology aims to ameliorate these everyday conversation difficulties, and the most common rehabilitation response to these difficulties has been the provision of technological support in the form of hearing aids and cochlear implants. However, residual communication difficulties remain for some adults with HI, and conversation-based interventions (particularly focused on repair strategies), involving both the HI adult and his or her familiar communication partner, are included in many current rehabilitation programs. Yet clinicians share little common understanding of the way everyday conversation is conducted, the ways it may be disrupted by an individual's HI, and the ways in which it may be ameliorated. This issue of Seminars in Hearing attempts to address some of these matters by bringing together clinically oriented research on conversation and adult-acquired HI by authors from the United States, Canada, and Australia.
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