Educational Assessments - Auditory Screening

Knox Audiology offer a variety of educational hearing assessments for children aged over 5 years of age.

Children aged between 5-6 years of age can be given an initial screening that measures how well they hear speech in background noise and how well they can hold speech in their auditory memory. These tests are often referred to as a Figure-Ground Test and a Short Term Auditory Memory (STAM) test.

The test we use for 5-6 year old children is deliberately brief. It is very important we don’t tire young children as tired children will not perform well on tests that are intended to measure auditory processing ability. As such, the test for young children is a ‘screening’ test. This means the test can give us some information about whether your child is processing speech normally or not, but it is limited in its ability to give us specific, diagnostic information about any presence of Auditory Processing Disorder – this can be done once the child is a bit older.

The educational screening for 5-6 year olds takes 40 minutes, and includes a hearing assessment.

Central Auditory Processing Disorder

Once children are 8 years of age or older, they are able to undertake a comprehensive measure of Central Auditory Processing Disorder.   The test we use is the ‘gold standard’ for children aged 8 years and older, and is a comprehensive diagnostic assessment with normative data. The test measures hearing acuity, speech discrimination in a quiet (optimal) situation, middle ear function, speech discrimination in background noise, pitch perception, short term auditory memory with digits and words, binaural integration and temporal processing. A full diagnostic report is compiled following analysis of the results and strategies to remedy any identified deficits are discussed. The test takes around 1.5 hours.