title: Experience with the audiologic assessment of infants and toddlers.
abstract: Experience with the behavioral assessment of hearing sensitivity is reported for 211 babies and toddlers aged 6-24 months. The visually reinforced head-turn procedure, visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA), was utilized to obtain threshold estimates for infants evaluated for both research and clinical purposes. At the initial test session, 90% of the infants and toddlers provided useful audiometric threshold data for air-conducted tonal signals; 84% could be assessed using standard earphones. The equipment arrangement described allows a single audiologist to complete the VRA assessment. The behavioral test technique offers the clinician a simple, efficient procedure for the routine audiometric assessment of the vast majority of very young children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, Rose F. Kennedy Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Gravel
authors.forename: D N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Traquina
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D001288:Attention; D001299:Audiometry / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D001844:Bone Conduction / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D009042:Motivation; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology