New pediatric Features on the r17A handheld screening audiometer

VTMR, Verbal Task and Motor Responses, is a new technique to detect hearing disability through screening at pediatric age and on adults, a complementary test using verbal tasks and motor responses to assess the ability of a subject to understand and perform simple actions. Whilst pure-tone audiometry may be used to screen individuals for hearing impairment, it is not suggested to screen for hearing disability; whereas self-report measures may not be sensitive to hearing disorder. Furthermore, there is an increasing evidence that the degree of peripheral hearing measured (loss of function) may not completely reflect individual’s real communication performance (speech comprehension) and may provide only a partial picture of subject’s real-life experience of the handicap and disability. Speech audiometry test with VTMR is proposed to test speech comprehension by soliciting the execution of simple tasks (motor response) to phonetically balanced verbal commands in a timely manner, this method is relatively simple and less likely to be conditioned by listener’s knowledge, speech fluency and cognitive factors, or by the linguistic context or patien.