If a patient cannot respond orally, he/she can write the digits or point to them on a response board. The established norms allowed patients as much time as they wished to respond. Give the patient ample time to respond, even though that may require pausing the CD occasionally. The first few items will be for practice.” (You may also provide oral examples of the numbers, i.e., in the right ear you may hear 2, 7, and in the left ear 5, 3.) If you are unsure of the numbers, please guess. Listen carefully in both ears and repeat all the numbers you hear. The patient should be instructed as follows: “You will be hearing two numbers in each of your ears. The important thing to remember is that the SL must be the same in each ear. Hence it is not critical to present the test at 50 dB SL. We have shown no difference in performance of normals at either 20 dB SL or 50 dB SL. The DDT reaches maximum performance around 20 dB SL in regard to hearing thresholds at 1000 Hz. In cases of peripheral hearing loss, it may be impossible to present the test at 50 dB SL. The test has been found to be relatively resistant to at least mild peripheral cochlear hearing losses, especially high-frequency losses. For people with hearing loss, the clinician may have to present at the most comfortable loudness level. The reference can also be the pure-tone average or the 1000-Hz threshold, but the spondee threshold is preferred. The test is usually presented at 50 dB SL in reference to the spondee threshold. Mark the score sheet to indicate the ear being tested.

One can do this by turning down the monitor for one channel and checking that the channel being monitored is directed to the appropriate ear. The channels must be calibrated separately, and the clinician must be sure the designation of channel to ear is accurate. The test requires relatively little time to administer and score and is easy for the patient to understand and complete.Īdministering the DDT requires a two-channel audiometer. It is commonly administered as part of an auditory processing test battery, and is also used to assess these skills in the elderly population, which can provide valuable information in fitting hearing aids. That is, the patient repeats what is heard in both ears. The DDT is a dichotic speech test with a relatively light linguistic load using a non-directed response method. These persons may have difficulty hearing in background noise or when more than one person is speaking. Individuals with difficulties in binaural integration often show a significant ear deficit, usually the left ear. This is the ability of the listener to process different information being presented to each ear at the same time. The Dichotic Digits Test (DDT) is a central auditory test that assesses binaural integration skills.

Auditory digit span test online