An ignoring task improves validity of cortical evoked response audiometry

Abstract

This study examined the basis for introducing an ignoring task during cortical evoked response audiometry (CERA) using the N1-P2 response. Healthy hearing participants were assigned to two groups with and without an ignoring task (ignoring and listening groups) during CERA whose outcomes were compared with the pure-tone audiometry (PTA) in response to tone frequencies at 500-4000 Hz. The ignoring but not the listening group exhibited positive correlations between the PTA and CERA thresholds, and further showed negative correlations between the PTA threshold and the N1-P2 amplitude as the tone intensity decreased particularly for lower tone frequencies. Within the healthy hearing levels at least, conducting an ignoring task is thus considered to improve the validity of CERA for lower tone frequencies.

A Pilot Study on Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials in Children: Aided CAEPs Reflect Improved High-Frequency Audibility with Frequency Compression Hearing Aid Technology

“…Breaks were given when requested. Participants were seated watching a muted movie of their choice with active subtitles and were instructed to ignore the stimuli played [28, 29]. The sequence of stimulus presentation in a session was randomized.…”

Uses and Limitations of Electrophysiology with Hearing Aids

“…Unaided use of AEPs continues today as a means of threshold estimation. Historically, CAEPs have been used successfully to estimate behavioral thresholds (approximately within 10 dB of behavioral threshold) of both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired populations [7][8][9][10] ; however, in some cases unaided CAEP thresholds can exceed behavioral thresholds by more than 20 dB. 6,11 This wide range of variability in threshold estimation has the potential to cause obvious challenges in the hearing aid fitting process.…”

Clinical Use of Aided Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials as a Measure of Physiological Detection or Physiological Discrimination

“…Historically, CAEPs have successfully been used to estimate behavioral thresholds (approx. within 10 dB of behavioral threshold) of both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired populations [22–24]. However, it remains to be established whether such strong correlations between physiological and behavioral thresholds are maintained in the case of aided CAEPs, in which the stimuli have been altered by hearing aid processing.…”