Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 15, 2026
Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
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.
Background:
Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR) allows the identification of infants with hearing loss and consequently early intervention. Therefore, it is important to assess the accuracy of ASSR for determining hearing thresholds in infants. This study aimed to systematically review the threshold differences between air-conducted ASSR and behavioural audiometry (BA) in infants.
Methods:
The population was infants younger than 2 years; the intervention was ASSR thresholds; the comparator was BA thresholds; and the outcome was the ASSR-BA threshold, i.e., the correction value in dB. PubMed, Web of Science, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Embase were searched. The risk of bias was evaluated using the Evidence Project risk of bias tool and the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale. The mean and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated for the threshold differences at four frequencies (0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz).
Results:
Of 503 articles identified, 10 were eligible for a narrative summary, and seven were included in the meta-analysis, which had a total of 2845 ASSR-BA thresholds. The articles were of moderate quality and showed substantial heterogeneity (I2 between 89 and 96%, p < 0.01). The mean differences (± 95% CI) between ASSR thresholds and BA hearing thresholds were 9.24 dB (± 6.45), 7.19 dB (± 4.02), 6.35 dB (± 4.51), and 7.42 dB (± 5.40) at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz, respectively.
Conclusions:
ASSR provides a reasonably accurate prediction of BA thresholds. Given the heterogeneity of the included studies, further research with larger infant populations is needed.
Systematic Review Registration:
The study was pre-registered in PROSPERO and followed PRISMA-P 2015 statement.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
01:31Hearing
01:13The Cochlea
01:01Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same frequency...
00:53Sound Intensity Level
The human ear can perceive an extensive range of sound intensity, necessitating the use of the logarithmic scale to define a physical quantity—the intensity level. It is a ratio of two intensities and hence a...
01:06Echo
Imagine the sound is reflected back to the ears. Assuming that the source is very close to the human, the difference between hearing the two sounds—the emitted sound and the reflected sound—may be more than the minimum time for perceiving distinct sounds. If this is the case, then the...
01:21Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...