title: The use of masking level differences in the identification of children with perceptual problems.
abstract: The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether masking level differences (MLD's) could differentiate between normal children and children with suspected auditory processing problems. MLD's for speech and 500-Hz tones were measured for an experimental group consisting of 24 normal-hearing children suspected of having auditory perceptual dysfunction. Fourteen children with normal auditory processing abilities and 11 normal-hearing adults comprised the control groups. Results indicated that (1) there was no difference between MLD's for "normal" children and normal adults; (2) there was no difference between speech MLD's for the two groups of children; however, (3) tonal MLD's for the children with suspected auditory perceptual problems were significantly lower than those for the normal groups. Using a cut-off tonal MLD of 7 dB, 79% of the experimental group were positively identified whereas only 12% of the normals were identified. The tonal MLD can be a strong addition to a central test battery, especially because it can be used with nonverbal children who cannot complete many tests because of limited linguistic skills.
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006313:Hearing Loss, Central / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013067:Speech Perception