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Updated: Jul 15, 2026

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
06:34

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

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The relationship between auditory steady-state response and behavioural audiometry in hearing estimation for infants:

Xin Huang1, Karolina Kluk1, Emanuele Perugia2

  • 1Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness (ManCAD), School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

Systematic Reviews
|December 3, 2025
PubMed

Insights

Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR) accurately predicts behavioral audiometry (BA) hearing thresholds in infants. Further research is needed due to study heterogeneity, but ASSR is a reliable tool for early hearing loss identification.

Area of Science:

  • Audiology
  • Pediatric Medicine
  • Hearing Science

Background:

  • Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR) is crucial for identifying hearing loss in infants, enabling early intervention.
  • Assessing the accuracy of ASSR in determining infant hearing thresholds is vital for effective clinical practice.
  • This systematic review evaluates the differences between ASSR and behavioral audiometry (BA) thresholds in infants.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To systematically review and quantify the threshold differences between air-conducted ASSR and BA in infants.
  • To assess the accuracy of ASSR as a predictor of hearing thresholds in the pediatric population.

Main Methods:

  • A systematic literature search was conducted across PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane, and Embase.
  • Infants under 2 years were included, comparing ASSR thresholds to BA thresholds.
  • Risk of bias was assessed, and mean threshold differences with 95% confidence intervals were calculated at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz.

Main Results:

  • Seven studies with 2845 thresholds were included in the meta-analysis, indicating moderate quality and high heterogeneity.
  • Mean differences between ASSR and BA thresholds ranged from 6.35 dB to 9.24 dB across tested frequencies.
  • The results showed ASSR provides a reasonably accurate prediction of BA hearing thresholds in infants.

Conclusions:

  • ASSR demonstrates reasonable accuracy in predicting behavioral audiometry thresholds in infants.
  • The significant heterogeneity across studies highlights the need for further research.
  • Larger infant cohort studies are recommended to refine the accuracy of ASSR for hearing threshold determination.
Abstract

Keywords:
Auditory Steady-State ResponseBehavioural AudiometryMeta-AnalysisNewborn Hearing ScreeningThreshold Difference

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