Reliability of auditory function tests in severely hearing-impaired and deaf subjects.
The test-retest variability of a series of auditory functions has been investigated in a group of severely hearing-impaired and deaf subjects (64 ears, median Fletcher index: 80 dB) and in a group of 10 controls with normal hearing. An adaptive forced-choice procedure was used for both groups. The functions were: tone audiogram, difference limen for intensity, difference limen for frequency, modulation transfer function and critical ratio. In spite of sometimes strongly deviating function values within the hearing-impaired group, the test-retest variability of the two groups was found to be of the same order of magnitude, except for the tone audiogram where the variability in the hearing-impaired group was twice that for the control group.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002648:Child; D003638:Deafness / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004056:Differential Threshold; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D006320:Hearing Tests; D006801:Humans