Sweetow R W, Reddell R C
J Am Aud Soc. 1978 Sep-Oct;4(2):52-6.
The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether masking level differences (MLD's) could differentiate between normal children and children with suspected auditory processing problems. MLD's for speech and 500-Hz tones were measured for an experimental group consisting of 24 normal-hearing children suspected of having auditory perceptual dysfunction. Fourteen children with normal auditory processing abilities and 11 normal-hearing adults comprised the control groups. Results indicated that (1) there was no difference between MLD's for "normal" children and normal adults; (2) there was no difference between speech MLD's for the two groups of children; however, (3) tonal MLD's for the children with suspected auditory perceptual problems were significantly lower than those for the normal groups. Using a cut-off tonal MLD of 7 dB, 79% of the experimental group were positively identified whereas only 12% of the normals were identified. The tonal MLD can be a strong addition to a central test battery, especially because it can be used with nonverbal children who cannot complete many tests because of limited linguistic skills.
本研究的目的是确定掩蔽级差（MLD）能否区分正常儿童和疑似有听觉处理问题的儿童。对由24名疑似有听觉感知功能障碍的听力正常儿童组成的实验组，测量了言语和500赫兹纯音的MLD。14名听觉处理能力正常的儿童和11名听力正常的成年人组成了对照组。结果表明：（1）“正常”儿童和正常成年人的MLD没有差异；（2）两组儿童的言语MLD没有差异；然而，（3）疑似有听觉感知问题的儿童的纯音MLD显著低于正常组。使用7分贝的纯音MLD截止值，实验组中79%被正确识别，而正常组中只有12%被识别。纯音MLD可以有力地补充中枢测试组，特别是因为它可以用于因语言技能有限而无法完成许多测试的非语言儿童。
