Symposium on sensorineural hearing loss in children: early detection and intervention. Behavioral audiometry with...

Our purpose in this discussion has been to present practical information about behavioral audiometry with infants and young children as a critical part of the comprehensive audiologic assessment. The introductory discussion focused on eight critical audiometric variables and the application of operant conditioning. These variables and operant principles were related to behavior observation audiometry, threshold audiometry (including play, visually reinforced and tangibly reinforced), and speech audiometry (including the speech awareness threshold, the speech reception threshold, and word discrimination). It is concluded that through careful application of these principles and procedures, meaningful audiometric data can be obtained from any child regardless of age or developmental disability.