In defense of the right and left audiograms: A reply to Coren (1989) and Coren and Hakstian (1990)

Abstract

Coren (1989) noticed that the various air-conduction pure-tone thresholds obtained from one ear ofan individual in quiet tend to display a high correlation. In addition, Coren and Hakstian (1990) In two recent articles, Coren (1989) and Coren and Hakstian (1990) noted that pure-tone thresholds in one ear of a given individual (measured at 6 audiometric frequencies covering the five-octave range between 250 and 8,000 Hz), as well as pure-tone threshold estimates in the two ears of the same individual, exhibit a high degree of correlation. On the basis of this observation, these authors propose to replace, in group data, (1) the pure-tone thresholds obtained at the 6 frequencies for each ear of an individual with a single number representing their average, and (2) the pure-tone thresholds obtained in the two ears of each individual with a single number representing either the average threshold of the two ears or the average threshold in the better ear. In other words, these authors would like to substitute a single number for either one or both of the left and right audiograms every time the object of study is a group of individuals, rather than a single individual. Although it is undeniable that pure-tone audiometric thresholds obtained at different frequencies in one or both ears of an individual often show high positive zeroorder correlations, 1 there are several valid reasons for not collapsing the (usually 12) threshold values into one number. The following paragraphs represent an attempt to bringThe authors gratefully acknowledge comments by James Jerger and two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of the manuscript. On Discounting Ears Headfirst: A Case Against "Counting Heads, Not Ears" Audiological research, as a matter of principle, is aimed at issues related to the hearing status, rather than that of the ears, of individuals. The measure that serves as the starting point (and, quite often, the only point) to determine an individual's hearing status is the audiogram, that is, estimation of pure-tone audibility thresholds in quiet at various frequencies (usually six). The overall hearing level and the shape of the right and left audiograms, as well as the difference between the two audiograms, provide information on the basis of which the audiologist can establish the hearing status of the individual. The audiograms and the assessment of hearing for each ear of the same individual can, and often do, differ. It is the audiological significance of differences between left and right thresholds at each frequency that constitutes the most powerful argument against Coren and Hakstian's (1990) suggestion-namely, to consider, in group data, only one threshold estimate per frequency (i.e., left-right average or one of the ears) instead of two. There are, however, additional reasons for arguing in favor of treating the two audiograms as separate data, even if thresholds measured at all frequencies in the two ears of each individual in a group were found to be correlated, and even if such a correlation had be...

Conjoint psychometric field estimation for bilateral audiometry

“…To quantify the similarity between audiogram thresholds for pairs of ears, a measure of intraclass correlation is necessary (Fisher, 1925). The perils of using a measure of interclass correlation in this case, such as the Pearson correlation, are exemplified for audiometry by debates on the appropriate interpretation of shared variation between the ears (Coren, 1989;Coren & Hakstian, 1990;Divenyi & Haupt, 1992). In this study, an unbiased Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) was used to quantify similarity between the audiogram thresholds in left and right ears (l and r, respectively):…”