Broad Objectives: This project will develop a computer-based unit for the behavioural assessment of hearing in young child. Different tonal, speech and environmental stimuli will be available for selection and the frequency, intensity and duration characteristics of stimuli will be controlled and assessed for their effectiveness in measuring hearing in young children. Both conditioned and unconditioned paradigms are used in assessing hearing in young children with the former approach being more appropriate for children over the age of 6 months. This research will focus on the development of an easy to use unit which accurately manages the various stimuli that are required to assess hearing in children. A second phase of this project is to assess the use of speech signals compared to tonal stimuli as a more relevant and meaningful signal for assessing hearing in young children. A further phase of the research is to examine aided hearing in young hearing impaired children with speech samples that differ with respect to phonemic structure.

That normal hearing children aged 6 to 24 months will respond more frequently and show fewer false positive responses to speech stimuli than to tonal stimuli. This will improve the current specificity of this type of assessment.