HEARING TEST FOR CHILDREN
A hearing test for children can be rather challenging especially with most children disliking a visit to a healthcare professional so its a good idea to prepare their mind set. By offering something fun online cannot be a bad thing and we normally make it like a game with children so atleast they can see the information on screen and hear the tones through the test. This will allow you to determine if a followup appointment is required or whether this was just to satisfy your children’s curiosity. You have a few choices available to you for a hearing test for children and by taking the online test you can then decide the best course of action for a follow-up appointment with a local audiologist.
One thing to remember is when doing a hearing test for children you often need a couple of tests completed as children often get distracted so in using our online hearing test you can do so whenever you like however you like as often as you like.
Try it yourself and see if you it fits in with your child as younger children may be better suited to an audiologist appointment instead of the online test but that’s entirely up to you and by having our hearing test for children available you are in control.
Hearing Test For Children
If you think you need to get a hearing test for your child or noticed they aren’t as responsive as normal (with the exception of children ignoring adult) we recommend you take the hearing test for children in the comfort of your own home as it can be challenging to get children out of the house at the best of times. We would recommend you take the time every 6-12 months to take the online test and then follow up with a detailed appointment with one of our local audiologists near you. It is also advisable to have a general understanding of your hearing before you visit an audiologist and our hearing test for children will provide a report you can keep safe and take with you if you do book a followup appointment where you have noticed hearing loss.
As with all of us the human ear comprises the OUTER EAR, the MIDDLE EAR and the INNER EAR.
The OUTER EARS function is to collect sound waves (which are actually nothing more than airborne vibration) in the bowl of the ear, amplify them at key frequencies which are important for hearing speech (a bit like a built-in ear trumpet – hence the shape) and direct them into the ear canal (which amplifies them again) down to the eardrum which then starts to vibrate.
The term MIDDLE EAR refers to a pressurised chamber inside your skull directly behind your eardrum. The three smallest bones in the human body live there – the Hammer or Malleus, the Anvil or Incus and Stirrup or Stapes. The Hammer is connected to the eardrum and the Stirrup to the inner ear. Collectively they are the Ossicles and their purpose is to act as a kind of crowbar to further increase the amount of energy delivered to the inner ear.
The INNER EAR houses the Cochlea which is a pea sized organ consisting of two liquid filled galleries which are reactive to movement from the Ossicles. When the Ossicles move in response to a sound being detected there is an increase in pressure in the upper gallery. This sets up a wave in the liquid, which presses down on the lower gallery. Via some complex anatomy and thousands of hair cells the movement generates coded electrical signals to the brain which then travel up the AUDITORY PATHWAY to the brain where they are perceived as sound. It is a model of elegant evolution being sufficiently acoustically pure to potentially enable us to:
- Detect small changes in volume
- Detect small changes in pitch – the range of the average ear is 20 – 20,000Hz
- Determine where a sound has come from – both horizontally and vertically
- Detect speech in noise
- Detect danger
A hearing test for children is one of the most important things you can do for your children as you protect them in every day life so if you notice issues its worth taking the simple test. This test is normally advisable for children from the age of 4 years of age.
