Berger R, Demirakca T
Abteilung Phoniatrie und Pädaudiologie, MZ der Hals-Nasen-Ohrenheilkunde, Philipps-Universität Marburg.
HNO. 2000 May;48(5):390-3.
The dichotic discrimination test for children could make an important contribution to the diagnosis of central auditory processing disorders. With previous test procedures and their interpretation it was not possible to get the auditory discrimination ability in only one grade. To evaluate this ability, it was necessary to measure the degree of comprehension in each ear as well as the required noise level. The evaluation cannot be used for statistical results because there are too many parameters. Moreover, results apparently similar can come from varying abilities. We are therefore working on a new method to evaluate dichotic hearing more accurately. By using a constant noise level and only evaluating positively those hearing pairs which have been repeated correctly, we arrive at one single grade. The dichotic discrimination test was administered to 46 children with auditory perception disorders and the results evaluated according to both, the previous and new evaluation system. According to the new evaluation, a maximum of 20 correct responses is possible. The average number of correct responses was significantly lower than by the previous evaluation system. The standard deviation increased from 16% on the left side and 13% in the right to 24%, or five word-pairs. The difference is even clearer when the test is subdivided into four performance ranges, each of 25%. Of all the children examined, 85% fell in the upper performance range according to the previous evaluation. No child was in the lowest performance range. According to the new evaluation, only 56.5% of the children were in the upper performance range, while three children, that is 6.5%, were in the lowest performance range. This difference, P = 0.0002, is highly significant. Our results demonstrate clearly that on the basis of the new evaluation system the measurement of dichotic ability is possible, for the first time. We consider the new evaluation method to be an improvement in determining dichotic discrimination and in comparing it with other abilities. To check the validity, further independent testing should be carried out and results compared with those obtained from children without auditory perception disorders.
儿童双耳辨别测试对中枢听觉处理障碍的诊断可能会有重要贡献。采用以前的测试程序及其解释方法，无法仅用一个等级来评估听觉辨别能力。为了评估这种能力，有必要测量每只耳朵的理解程度以及所需的噪声水平。由于参数过多，该评估不能用于统计结果。此外，看似相似的结果可能来自不同的能力。因此，我们正在研究一种新方法，以更准确地评估双耳听力。通过使用恒定的噪声水平，并且只对正确重复的听力对进行正向评估，我们得出一个单一的等级。对46名有听觉感知障碍的儿童进行了双耳辨别测试，并根据旧的和新的评估系统对结果进行了评估。根据新的评估，最多可能有20个正确反应。正确反应的平均数量明显低于旧的评估系统。标准差从左侧的16%和右侧的13%增加到24%，即五个单词对。当测试细分为四个表现范围，每个范围为25%时，差异更加明显。在所有接受检查的儿童中，根据旧的评估，85%处于较高表现范围。没有儿童处于最低表现范围。根据新的评估，只有56.5%的儿童处于较高表现范围，而三名儿童，即6.5%，处于最低表现范围。这种差异，P = 0.0002，具有高度显著性。我们的结果清楚地表明，基于新的评估系统，首次有可能测量双耳能力。我们认为新的评估方法在确定双耳辨别以及将其与其他能力进行比较方面是一种改进。为了检验有效性，应该进行进一步的独立测试，并将结果与没有听觉感知障碍的儿童所获得的结果进行比较。
