Hearing & Auditory Processing Assessment

Is a hearing test to find the quietest sounds that you can hear.  Different sounds are presented through headphones or a headband. You are asked to respond to the sounds by pressing a button when you hear them.

Whilst you are sitting still a soft tipped probe is placed in your ear canal and pressure changes show how the ear drum and middle ear are working.

Short bursts of sound are presented through a soft tipped probe placed in your ear canal to check the working of the small, middle ear muscle.

A soft tipped probe is placed in the ear canal and records the movement of the ear drum before and after swallowing a sip of water. The eustachian tube links the middle  ear to the back of the throat and serves as a vent to equalise pressure between the atmosphere and the middle ear.

A clicking sound is presented to your ear through a soft probe placed in the outer part of your ear. The probe then records the reflection of sound back from the inner ear .

A clicking sound is presented to your ear through a soft probe placed in the outer part of your ear. At the same time, a broadband noise is presented through a headphone to the opposite ear. The probe then records the reflection of sound back from the inner ear with the noise (condition 1) and without the noise (condition 2) to the opposite ear. The difference in the two conditions is the “suppression” effect, i.e. the ability of the brain to control the ear’s response when noise is present in order to make hearing more effective.

To check how well you can hear speech sounds some words will be presented to each ear in turn through headphones and you will be asked to repeat what you hear. The words are presented at medium, loud and quiet levels.  

This test examines the nerve of hearing as part of the hearing pathway to the brain. Sensors are placed on the skin behind your ears, on your forehead and on the top of your head. You will then be asked to lie on a couch with your eyes closed and be as relaxed as possible. Headphones will present a loud clicking noise to one ear and a rushing sound in the other. We will be measuring time taken for the sound to get to your brain and will this be repeated for both ears.

A variety of tests using headphones can be used to look at how the ears and brain process the sounds that you hear. Some of these include:

• Dichotic Digit Test - two numbers are presented to each ear simultaneously and you are asked to repeat all four numbers.

• Frequency Pattern Test - you will listen to three tones of different pitch and are asked to say the pattern that you heard.

• Duration Pattern Test  - you will hear three tones of long or short duration and will be asked to say the pattern that you heard.

• Gaps In Noise - you will hear a brief rushing noise that will have some gaps/breaks in it. You are asked how many gaps you heard and this will range from 0-3 gaps.

• Speech In Noise - you will hear some words in a noisy background like a cafeteria type babble noise (speech in babble) or sentences in cafeteria type babble noise (QuickSiN) and are asked to repeat the word or sentence that you hear. The noise level will vary.

• The Listening In Spatialised Noise Sentences Test (LiSN-S) – you will hear and repeat sentences that are presented at the same time with competing speech. The sentences that are target i.e. need to be repeated, will come from the same or from different spatial locations to the competing speech, and will be presented in the same talker voice or different talker voice.