Comparing TROCA and peep-show in testing the hearing of young children

The hearing of 24 normal hearing children ranging in age from 18 to 32 months was tested by TROCA and peep-show, two operant conditioning technique differing only in the type of reward. Children between 18 and 24 months consistently exhibited poorer thresholds (lowest response levels) than children between 25 and 32 months. The older children required fewer trials for threshold determination and took less time in completing testing. Children tested with TROCA exhibited significantly poorer thresholds (although the differences were small) and took significantly longer to complete testing than for peep-show. No differences were found between the two methods for the number of trials to obtain threshold. The results strongly suggest that the type of reward is not an important factor in testing the hearing of young, normal children.