[The reliability of audiometry based on conscious orientation of the hearing impaired child (author's transl)].

The authors present the audiometric procedure for hearing impaired children, which has been developed and performed routinely for some years by the Department of Audiology in the ENT-Clinic of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. Problems of children's audiometry are discussed. The procedure developed, is based on the children's conscious orientation to the source of sound which can regularly be registered especially in children of the age from 5 or 6 months to 3 or 4 years. The threshold provoking orientation is 45 to 50 dB (absolute). The results gained by the method described are compaired with those which were obtained 4 to 9 years later in 41 subjects suffering from heredodegenerative hearing loss. A coefficient of correlation r = 0.77 was found, indication a very near correlation of results for both procedures. When compaired to ERA, the test presented is simple to perform and is though to be very valuable for praxis. The orientation audiometry is more exact than the test of subjective audiometry and various procedures based on acoustical reflexes, too.