Identification of binaural integration deficits in children with the Competing Words Subtest: Standard score versus interaural asymmetry

The Competing Words Subtest is a commonly used dichotic listening test for assessing binaural integration in children suspected of having an auditory processing disorder. In 124 children, standard scores from the subtest suggested a binaural integration deficit in 23% of the children tested. Because standard scores are derived from the combined scores of both ears during the test, children with normal performance in one ear and weak performance in the other ear may be overlooked. For these children, a measure of interaural asymmetry may be a more sensitive indicator of a binaural integration deficit. When an age-appropriate criterion for interaural asymmetry from the Competing Words Subtest was used, the incidence of a binaural integration deficit increased to 51% of the children tested. Four typical patterns of dichotic listening performance were identified based on results from the two scoring techniques. © 2006 British Society of Audiology, International Society of Audiology, and Nordic Audiological Society

Development of an auditory test battery for young children: a pilot study.

Contains fulltext : 58228.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)This article describes the development and results of a pilot study with a recently developed auditory test battery for 4-6-year-old Dutch children. The test battery consisted of a sustained auditory attention (SAA) test, a dichotic words (DW) test, a binaural masking-level difference (BMLD) test, an auditory word discrimination (AWD) test, a gap detection (GD) test and a test of phonemic awareness, the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization (LAC) test. Our results show that this test battery can be administered successfully to children aged 4 years and older. Most tests showed a clear effect of chronological age; the strongest age effects were found for the DW test and the LAC test. The BMLD test was the only test for which no significant age effect was found in this group of children. A small, but significant right-ear advantage was found on the DW test, for the 4- and the 6-year-olds. Correlations between subtests were in general rather high, suggesting that several tests in this test battery may be tapping into similar auditory abilities