Assessment of Children With Variable Hearing Amplification Devices by Speech Auditory Brainstem Response

Hearing loss in children can result in cognitive deficits in the central areas which are dependent upon hearing, therefore responsible for delay in speech development, poor language skills and disorders in psychological and mental behavior. It will also cause a decrease of the intellectual ability and socio-economic position of the child.

In children aged 3.5 years and older, pure tone audiometry is performed to determine the exact frequency-specific hearing threshold.

To obtain the auditory threshold in younger children, Skoe and Kraus reported that the auditory brainstem response has proven to be a clinically useful tool for assessing neural function at the brainstem level and is most commonly elicited by clicks or tone-bursts.

However, recent research has established that complex stimuli can also elicit the response such as Music, complex tones, and speech stimuli . A speech stimulus is particularly useful, as it can provide clues as to how temporal and spectral features are preserved in the brainstem.

The human soundscape is characterized by complex sounds with rich harmonic structure, dynamic amplitude modulations and rapid spectro-temporal fluctuations. This complexity is represented by temporal and spectral neural code within the auditory brainstem, two broad classes of time-locked responses can be defined namely transient and sustained responses .