Children's Hearing Tests
Exact Hearing Services conducts infants hearing tests and hearing test for toddlers by utilising paediatric visual reinforcement audiology (VRA).
What is VRA? VRA is a test that allows your Exact Hearing Services audiologist to assess hearing in infants and toddlers too young for normal tests. VRA relies on behavioral conditioning to train very young kids to respond to sounds and is designed for children aged 6 months to around 3 years old.
VRA uses a machine called an audiometer to test the child’s hearing threshold levels. Standard pure tone audiometers use headphones and a feedback button, making them impractical as a hearing test for young children. VRA replaces the headphones with earphones or sound field speakers and makes use of visual reinforcers such as video animations or lighted toys placed 90-degrees to each side of the patient to “train” the child to look toward the direction of the sound.
What should I expect? VRA measures hearing sensitivity in infants and young toddlers aged 6 months to 3 years. While the child sits upright on a parent or caregiver’s lap the audiologist plays a tone or some other sound to one of the child’s ears. At first, the audiologist lights up the boxes in conjunction with the sound. This “trains” the child to respond by either shifting their eyes or turning their head towards the source of the sound. Once a child understands what to do, the audiologist can “reward” the child by briefly delaying the visual stimuli.
During the test, the audiologist reduces the intensity of both the sound and the stimuli until the child’s minimum hearing threshold is reached. Tests continue using different frequencies until the audiologist has a complete set of data about your child’s hearing in both ears.
Children’s Hearing Tests: We perform hearing tests for children by asking them to respond to sounds in the form of a series of fun and enjoyable puzzles and games, using headphones. The test is painless, fun for the child and usually requires 30 minutes to complete.
Parents or guardians are welcome to remain in the room during the test.