van Dijk Catherine, Osman Naeema
Department of Communication Pathology, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
S Afr J Commun Disord. 2008;55:29-36.
Pure-tone testing is the primary audiological test procedure for the differential diagnosis of hearing loss and hearing disorders in school-aged children. No research is currently available internationally for children's responses to continuous versus pulsed pure-tones. The aim of this exploratory investigation was to compare the performance of a group of school-aged children on continuous versus pulsed pure-tone audiometry. The aims were to determine whether a threshold difference existed between continuous versus pulsed pure-tones and to record whether a listener preference existed between continuous versus pulsed tones for the frequency range of 125 to 8000 Hz. Eighteen children (36 ears) aged between 8-12 years, participated in a hearing evaluation as well as in a brief three-question interview. Descriptive statistics viz. average threshold, mean difference and standard deviation of thresholds were used to analyse data. Listeners' perceived preferences were calculated in percentages and reasons for preferring one signal over another was analysed qualitatively. Although the automatically pulsed tone threshold (averaged across the frequencies tested) was lower than for the continuous tone, the difference was only 0.2 dB in the left ear and 0.5dB in the right ear. This small difference is not important in clinical applications for which 5 dB increments are used in pure-tone audiometry. Where a listener preference was indicated, however, the continuous tones were preferred over pulsed tones by 56% percent of subjects. These findings differ from similar studies involving adults. This revealed that children may yield different preferences during pure-tone testing than adults and that these preferences should be taken into consideration during testing.
纯音测试是学龄儿童听力损失和听力障碍鉴别诊断的主要听力学测试方法。目前国际上尚无关于儿童对连续纯音与脉冲纯音反应的研究。这项探索性调查的目的是比较一组学龄儿童在连续纯音听力测定和脉冲纯音听力测定中的表现。目的是确定连续纯音与脉冲纯音之间是否存在阈值差异，并记录在125至8000赫兹频率范围内，听众对连续纯音与脉冲纯音是否存在偏好。18名年龄在8至12岁之间的儿童（36只耳朵）参与了听力评估以及简短的三问题访谈。使用描述性统计数据，即平均阈值、阈值的平均差异和标准差来分析数据。听众的感知偏好以百分比计算，并对偏好一种信号而非另一种信号的原因进行定性分析。尽管自动脉冲音阈值（在测试频率范围内平均）低于连续音，但左耳的差异仅为0.2分贝，右耳为0.5分贝。在纯音听力测定中使用5分贝增量的临床应用中，这种小差异并不重要。然而，在表明有听众偏好的情况下，56%的受试者更喜欢连续音而非脉冲音。这些发现与涉及成年人的类似研究不同。这表明儿童在纯音测试中可能比成年人有不同的偏好，并且在测试过程中应考虑这些偏好。
