Air and bone conducted speech reception thresholds

The negative psycho‐educational effects and the need for early diagnosis and treatment of mild hearing loss in children is documented. Literature is cited which suggests that air and bone conducted speech stimuli may be superior to pure tone stimuli when used to measure the hearing acuity of children. The sparse literature dealing with the use of bone conducted speech stimuli is reviewed. Experimental data obtained from children is presented, which demonstrates that air and bone conducted speech stimuli yield thresholds equivalent to those obtained with pure tones and that thresholds can be obtained faster by using speech stimuli. Pediatric cases are presented which demonstrate that the use of air and bone conducted speech reception thresholds can differentiate conductive and sensori‐neural hearing loss and that reliable speech reception thresholds can frequently be obtained from pediatric patients when pure tone thresholds cannot. The use of air and bone conducted speech reception thresholds is advocated as both an alternative and a complement to traditional pure tone audiometry, particularly with pediatric cases.