Combining Speech-Evoked Potentials for More Sensitive Hearing Tests in Infants and Adults

Combining speech-evoked EFRs elicited by multiple phonemes and phoneme formants improved test sensitivities in frequency-band-specific and non-frequency-specific assessments of speech audibility. Such combination tests might be used to quickly obtain a preliminary, non-frequency-specific assessment of hearing, and then progressively home in on frequency-specific assessments. If testing terminates early, for example, due to the infant waking up, then the preliminary assessments may still provide useful information.