Bonino Angela Yarnell, Leibold Lori J
Department of Allied Health Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder;
Center for Hearing Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital.
J Vis Exp. 2017 Jan 23(119):54788. doi: 10.3791/54788.
Collecting reliable behavioral data from toddlers and preschoolers is challenging. As a result, there are significant gaps in our understanding of human auditory development for these age groups. This paper describes an observer-based procedure for measuring hearing sensitivity with a two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. Young children are trained to perform a play-based, motor response (e.g., putting a block in a bucket) whenever they hear a target signal. An experimenter observes the child's behavior and makes a judgment about whether the signal was presented during the first or second observation interval; the experimenter is blinded to the true signal interval, so this judgment is based solely on the child's behavior. These procedures were used to test 2 to 4 year-olds (n = 33) with no known hearing problems. The signal was a 1,000 Hz warble tone presented in quiet, and the signal level was adjusted to estimate a threshold corresponding to 71%-correct detection. A valid threshold was obtained for 82% of children. These results indicate that the two-interval procedure is both feasible and reliable for use with toddlers and preschoolers. The two-interval, observer-based procedure described in this paper is a powerful tool for evaluating hearing in young children because it guards against response bias on the part of the experimenter.
从蹒跚学步的幼儿和学龄前儿童那里收集可靠的行为数据具有挑战性。因此，我们对这些年龄组人类听觉发育的理解存在重大差距。本文描述了一种基于观察者的程序，该程序采用双间隔、二项迫选范式来测量听力敏感度。训练幼儿每当听到目标信号时执行基于游戏的运动反应（例如，将积木放入桶中）。实验者观察孩子的行为，并判断信号是在第一个还是第二个观察间隔期间呈现的；实验者不知道真实的信号间隔，所以这个判断完全基于孩子的行为。这些程序被用于测试2至4岁、无已知听力问题的儿童（n = 33）。信号是在安静环境中呈现的1000赫兹调频音，信号强度经过调整以估计对应于71%正确检测率的阈值。82%的儿童获得了有效的阈值。这些结果表明，双间隔程序对于幼儿和学龄前儿童来说既可行又可靠。本文所述的基于观察者的双间隔程序是评估幼儿听力的有力工具，因为它可以防止实验者出现反应偏差。
