AUDIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

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I. Decibel Revisited

A. dB SPL-- The unit of sound intensity measured with the ____________.
A dB SPL plot begins with 0 at the _________ of the ordinate. The normal audibility curve shows that our hearing is most sensitive in the _________  frequencies. The reference values used in calibrating the _________   comes from this normal audibility curve.

B. dB HL-- Unit of sound intensity when measuring hearing with an audiometer that normalizes the average threshold values in dB SPL to _________  dB HL.
The normal audibility curve in dB HL is a _________   line. At 1000 Hz, for a TDH 39
earphone, _________  hearing is 7 dB SPL. Therefore, 40 dB HL is equivalent to _________  dB SPL. The value in dB SPL will always be _________  than the equivalent value in dB HL.

C. SPL/HL Conversions--A curve that is flat on a dB SPL plot will be _________  on a dB HL plot with better hearing in the _________   and _________  frequencies.
A curve that is parallel to the normal audibility curve in dB SPL will be _________  on a dB HL plot.  A curve that is a reverse-cookie bite on the dB SPL plot will be _________  on a dB HL plot.

II. Pediatric Protocol

A. Important Factors in the Sound Field

1. Angle-Azimuth refers to the position of the __________ relative to the speaker delivering the signal. It is determined in degrees. Child sits at  __________ or  __________ degrees from speakers most often. The sound field is calibrated to a certain degree azimuth (usually 45 deg). The sound arriving at the ear is influenced by  __________ and __________ effects. With child at   __________ from speaker the ear canal is at a direct channel to the speaker and the ear canal resonance is high.

2. Distance from speaker- Typically the distance between patient and loudspeaker is  __________ but may be different for each room.

3. Stimuli- Warble tones better for sound field because of the limited signal variation with head movement, but the tradeoff is reduced   _______________.  Pure Tones are more frequency-specific but bounce off walls and can vary greatly in level with movement of the client. The   __________ the spectrum of the signal, the less the SPL varies with head movement. Narrow-band noise is more stable than warble tones, however, threshold may be   __________ if there is a steeply sloping hearing loss.

B. Procedures with Children

1. Threshold Testing Behavioral Observation Audiometry (BOA)- Appropriate for infants birth to  __________ months.  Observe responses to sound (sucking,startle) and responses during no sound trials or   __________trials. There is no reinforcement.

Conditioned Oriented Response (COR)- Appropriate for infants 6 mos to children  __________yrs. The examiner pairs sounds with particular responses and gives  __________ by visual lights(VRA) or puppet (PIWI).

Tangible Reinforcement Audiometry is for the hard-to-test. Greater motivation is provided with food or other tangible reinforcement.

Computer Play Reinforcement- Button is pressed when sound is heard and computer adds something to the screen.

Play Audiometry- Appropriate for children 2-3 yrs to   __________ yrs. Child
responds to sound by manipulation of toys.  Preferably there is a  __________ goal such as trying to swat a family of mosquitoes. Toys with appropriate parts
include blocks, pegs, puzzles.

2. Materials for Speech Recognition 2-4 yrs- familiar words such as body parts, closed set; ideally have  __________ choices to keep guessing minimal.

3-5 yrs- NUCHIPS- Northwestern Univ. Children’s Pictures. Child points to one of  __________ pics per page.

4-6 yrs- WIPI- Word Intelligibility by Picture Identification. Panel of __________ similar sounding pictures per page.

6-14 yrs- PBK’s Phonetically Balanced word lists. No  __________, words are repeated.

__________ Yrs-HINT-Hearing In Noise Test for Children--Test is given in the sound field with  __________ noise.  Child repeats a whole sentence. A signal-to-noise ratio is determined for  __________ correct recognition.

14yrs- Standard adult lists,  __________ or NU6, may be used.

III. Audiogram Review

A. Simple Rules

1. Pure Tone Average and Speech Reception Threshold should agree within  __________ of each other.

2. Thresholds for tones may be worse than for speech with children because they are  __________. If the threshold for speech is worse, it may be suggestive of a central disorder or  __________ problems.

3. Speech Awareness Threshold should agree with the 250-500Hz threshold within 10dB. This is where the most  __________ is contained in the speech signal.

4. Speech Recognition Testing also know as word   __________ is typically given at  ______ to ______ dBSL

5. Masking-Masking is necessaryfor air conduction, if the AC 0 in the test ear-40>BC 0 in the ________.

6. Masking-Masking is necessary for --bone cond. if .....the Air bone gap > __________.

7. Masking is needed during speech recognition testing if the  __________ minus 40 > best BC 0 in the non-test ear at any frequency.

B. Interpretation of Speech Recognition Scores

Thornton & Raffin tables show the   __________ between 2 scores to be considered a significant difference. Use the first score to find the range in the table. If the second score is __________ this range, it is considered to be significantly different.  If it is  __________ the range, it is highly likely that score would be achieved on subsequent administrations just due to chance variability.  The more words that are presented in a given test, the more   __________ the test is, i.e. the critical difference range becomes   __________.  In order to determine if a significant change in speech recognition has occurred, one must know how many  __________ were presented. For example, two scores 65% and 85% would be significantly different if _____ words were presented but would not be significantly different if ____words were presented.

IV. Pediatric Responses

Localization

Newborn: Arousal

_____: Beg. Head Turn

_____: Horizontal only

_____: Horizontal & down

_____: Horiz, down, & up

_____: Localizes directly

Response Levels

Startle-Should occur for speech at ________ regardless of age (Downs, 1974) Minimum Response Levels vary by___ _______ _________ ____

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Compare Martin & Clark (1996) Table 6.1 with Gravel (2000) Table 2

Conclude:

Variability is less with____________

Responses are lower with __________

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