**Author details**

*Journal of Speech Disorders* on page 218 appears a brief announcement that the "Speech Clinic at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, is the permanent Naval center for rehabilitation and

Interestingly, according to Berger [8] the term "Audiology" cannot be attributed to a specific individual, a notion which contracts what I have learned in my academic training in the US, where it was considered common knowledge that Raymond Carhart was the father of Audiology. Berger [8] reports the following: "*the original creator of the term (Audiology) remains unknown, but possible originators are considered: (i) Mayer BA Schier; (ii) Willard B Hargrave ; (iii) Stanley Nowak; (iv) Norman Canfield; (v) Raymond Carhart* [9]*. In a biographical profile by Robert Galambos, Hallowell Davis* [10] *is credited with coining the term in the 1940s, when he said that the then‐prevalent term "auricular training" sounded like a method of teaching people how to wiggle their ears."* It is interesting to note that from these six pioneering contributors, four (Carhart and

From the mid‐1970s, several terms have appeared in print, regarding clinical activities which were deviated from the classical categorization of "Audiology." Typical examples are the following terms: "Hearing Science" [11]; "Clinical Auditory Science" [12]; "Auditory NeuroScience" [12], and so on. It is still difficult to define and discriminate these terms, since the Audiological training is very different around the globe. For example, in most European countries, Audiology is a medical specialization, while the Speech and Hearing Science is associated with communication department curricula. So in an attempt to define all terms, one can assume that activities related to Hearing Science/Auditory Science have a "research inspiration" objective (more research or education oriented) derived from basic Neurosciences, while the terms Audiology or Clinical Audiology refer to a basic clinical activity of assessing

To summarize, my objective in conjunction with the contributions and collaboration of the participated authors for this "Advances" volume was to collect material from a Hearing Science perspective, which could be applied to the everyday clinical Audiological reality.

Considering the long history of Audiology and Hearing Science, it is only natural that numerous and fundamental volumes exist (as the all‐time reference by Katz [13]) in English and in many other languages. So it was an interesting challenge to chart the latest "advances" in the field and to find the best way to diffuse the new information to students

The term "**advances**" implies a further development on a specific topic. For the area of Audiology, this would mean developments in the following thematic areas: (i) clinical hearing assessment procedures, (ii) rehabilitation strategies, (iii) hardware development (more precise

Davis excluded) were related to technical fields (electroacoustics).

**3. Deviations of the term "Audiology"**

the hearing of a human subject.

**4. What "advances" can be?**

and professionals.

for research in Speech and Audiology."

4 Advances in Clinical Audiology

Stavros Hatzopoulos

Address all correspondence to: sdh1@unife.it

Clinic of Audiology and ENT, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
