Test of auditory comprehension: a comparison of hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners

Normal-hearing (NH) children (N:35) aged 9-11 yrs in regular classrooms were given all 10 subtests of the Test of Auditory Comprehension (TAC) (Trammel, 1976). Group means of raw scores, measures of dispersion, and of internal consistency, alpha, and of test-retest reliability, r, were computed and are presented here for the first time for NH Ss. These data were compared with TAC norms published for a group of 750 hearing-impaired (HI) children with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. Group means for the NH Ss were substantially higher (p less than or equal to .05) on 9 of the 10 subtests than for the HI Ss, but the dispersion was always substantially greater. Furthermore, estimates of alpha and of r were greater on 8 of the 10 subtests for alpha and on 8 for r, the 8 tests not altogether overlapping. The implication is that different auditory processing information may be used by the two different populations, generally supporting the use in the clinic of only those tests specifically designed and demonstrated to be applicable for specific populations.