The hearing test has been designed as an Animal Sound Game, in which the child after initial training, has to point out to the pictures of : cow, rooster or birds when their calibrated in sound intensity and frequency voices are played to the child’s ear from the mobile phone at the fixed distance from the ear or through the insert earphones.
The centre frequencies of these voices are: cow 500 Hz, rooster 1500 Hz, birds 4000 Hz and they cover the frequency range needed by the child to hear adequately for speech development.
The Animal Sound Game has been designed for children aged 2 years and older, who can be trained to correlate animal voices and pictures. The older children can verbally answer the name of the animal without using the pictures.
The Animal Sound Game can also be used for children younger than 2 years. For these children the tester will observe the child’s reaction ( eye and/or head movements, change in movement of hands or/and legs, etc.) when the sound is presented from the distance to the child’s ear in unexpected manner. ( For this test no pictures are needed ). Please visit this link: TESTING BABIES.
After you become familiar with the testing programs and loaded them into your mobile phone, there are 2 important steps to follow:
- training - calibration
described in detail in PREPARATION section.
GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE TESTING METHOD.
The testing method is based on observing and recording the child’s response to the complex sounds with filtered frequency bands. It is well known from clinical practice that babies and young children poorly respond to artificial sounds like pure tones or even warble tones, but they respond much better to complex environmental sounds.
In this testing the three frequency bands can be used:
low tones - center frequency 500 Hz ( Filtered cow voice ) medium tones - center frequency 1500 Hz ( Filtered rooster voice ) high tones - center frequency 4000 Hz ( Filtered birds voices )
These bands cover the most important frequency range of sounds needed for the child’s speech development. The animal voices according to their pitch have been matched with these bands and additionally filtered to narrow their frequency spectrum.
The hearing screening can be conducted in a few ways depending upon the child’s age, cooperation and behavioural pattern.
Testing features:
- unlimited number and order of each sound presentation to the L or R ear - test may be stopped any time to follow the child’s behaviours - test can be completed even over a few days – if necessary – during the best times for child’s cooperation. - test results can be manually recorded by the tester on a special Record Form ( print from RECORD FORM ). - test results data can be manually transferred to the PC if there is such a need ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For testing babies 6 months and older ( see TESTING BABIES )