AUDITORY STEADY STATE RESPONSE FALSE NEGATIVE AND FALSE POSITIVE RATES

Atrium

Objective. The objective of the study is to establish the false positive and false negative rates when stimulating one ear with no stimulation to the other while conducting Auditory Steady State Response (ASSR) testing using the Biologic MASTER, and to determine whether a minor increase in activity level affects the error rates. Background. The auditory steady state response (ASSR) is a test that assesses hearing of children too young to take other forms of testing. It involves monitoring neural signals generated when the sound is heard. On occasion, the test will falsely report a sound as heard when it is not or lack of hearing when the sound is heard. Methods. Normal-hearing subjects are used for this study. The effect of frequencies presented by the Bio-logic and the state of the subject is examined to determine the influence of these factors on the false results. Results. The false negative rates are statistically significant for both effects of frequency presented and state of the patient. The false positive rates showed no main effects. Conclusion. One would expect a false positive rate of 5% when testing a normal subject with the earphone not coupled to the ear. The rate of false positives during this study was found to be significantly higher (Chi-square = 16.4, df=1, p < .001). This supports the findings that false reports of normal hearing occur more often than one would anticipate. The false negative rate found in this study adds to existing literature. Grants. N/A