A comparison of clinical behavioral audiometry and autoregression analysis of EEG and heart rate in hearing-impaired children.
Autoregressive analysis, a statistical technique for detecting changes in electroencephalic (EEG) and heart rate (HR) data was compared with clinical behavioral audiometric results on 10 hearing-impaired children in schools for the hard of hearing and deaf. EEG and HR data were collected in a screening paradigm involving tones of .5, 1, and 4 kc/s at 80 db SPL in a free field. An index of reliability, or acceptable level of agreement, was set at 70%. This criterion was met 5 out of 6 times. For the EEG, agreements exceeded 70% at 1 and at 4 kc/s, and for HR at all 3 frequencies. Results suggest that the autoregressive approach yields data very similar to behavioral audiometry in this population. Continued exploration of autoregressive analysis of electrophysiologic indices in determining reactivity to tones is warranted, particularly since the statistical method can be used with younger infants.
D001299:Audiometry / Q000379:methods*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003638:Deafness / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D011603:Psychophysiology; D012044:Regression Analysis