Audio Testing Research Paper

Types Of Audio Tests That Help Diagnose Your Age-Related Hearing Loss

It's common to experience some hearing loss as you age, especially if you worked around loud equipment most of your life. At some point, your loss of hearing might begin to interfere with your quality of life. Conversations become difficult to follow, you can't hear the television without it being so loud it disturbs everyone else in the house, and you might even put your safety in danger if you can't hear approaching cars when you're out walking. At the first sign of hearing loss, you should be tested. Here are some audio tests that help diagnose the type and severity of your loss.

Spoken Word Tests

These tests help determine how well you can distinguish words. The audiologist may start with a whisper test. To do this, he or she stands behind you and whispers a list of words. You repeat the words you hear. This reveals how well you can distinguish sounds at a very low level. A similar test is done with spoken words. For this test you'll probably wear headphones to listen to a recording of simple words at various levels of loudness. You'll be asked to

You wear headphones and listen as a machine emits a series of tones of various pitch and loudness. When you hear a tone, you signal with your hand or push a button. When the test is over, the audiologist will analyze the results by calculating how many tones you missed. This test reveals which sound frequencies are out of your range of hearing and how loud sound has to be for you to hear it.

Treatment for hearing loss usually involves wearing a hearing aid. The device is selected according to the degree of hearing loss you have. For that reason, you should only take the audio tests when you're feeling well and hearing normally. For instance, you shouldn't take an audio test if you have a head cold or if you've recently been exposed to loud noise such as a music