抄録
Auditory screening test using words instead of pure tones was administered for pre-school children. Ten different words (ex. television, banana and so on) used in this study were considered to be familiar to children and were administered at the level of 30 dB.
Children were instructed to repeat the word which they heard after each word was given. If a child could hear less than 7 words out of 10 correctly, he was screened.
This screening test was applied to 2, 564 children whose age distribution was 3 to 6 year old (mostly 4 or 5). As the method of this test was simple enough for these children, all cases could be tested satisfactrily. Out of 2, 564 children, 83 cases (3.2%) were identified. Forty two of them took the close examination of pure tone audiometry at our suggestion. According to the results of the test, 31 ears (55.4%) out of 56 had hard of hearing at the level of 30 dBHL or more.
On the other hand, 94 children (188 ears) who passed the verbal auditory screening were found that all of them had pure tone threshold below 25 dB.
It is concluded that the present method is prevented “bypass” of children with hearing loss and considered as usefull for an auditory screening test for pre-school children.
