Detection of Hearing Loss with Ipsilateral Acoustic Reflex Thresholds

Abstract

This study consisted of two experiments both of which involved measurement of the ipsilateral acoustic reflex threshold (ART). In Experiment I, ipsilateral ARTs were measured in normal-hearing adults for a 2 000-Hz tone and computer-generated complex stimuli of varying bandwidth. Results of this experiment revealed that the bandwidth effect for the ipsilateral ART was similar to the contralateral effect. The ART decreased monotonically as a function of bandwidth of the reflex-eliciting stimulus. Results of Experiment II indicated that ipsilateral ARTs successfully differentiated between normal hearing and significant hearing loss, in difficult-to-test groups of young children, when used with the bivariate plotting procedure. In addition, obtaining reflexes ipsilaterally, rather than contralaterally, appeared to have advantages with this population. The ipsilateral test apparatus is less cumbersome, the possibility of calibration error from a malpositioned contralateral earphone is eliminated and the children were generally more accepting of the ipsilateral assembly.