A comparison of three hearing aid evaluation procedures for young children

The evaluation of hearing aid performance with young, nonverbal children traditionally consists of a comparison between aided and unaided thresholds. Alternative evaluation procedures include those that provide an estimate of the speech spectrum area that is potentially audible to the child with amplification. This study compared the hearing aid performance results for ten hearing impaired children evaluated with a sound field procedure and two speech spectrum methods. Results obtained for three hearing aids demonstrated no differences in hearing aid recommendation between procedures for children with only mild-moderate hearing loss. For children with severe to profound losses, however, the sound-field audiogram was found to overestimate what is potentially audible to the child.