Binaural Fusion Test In Kannada For Children

Abstract

The study aimed at developing a Binaural fusion test in Kannada language and establishing the normative data for the test across the 5 age groups of 7-7.11 years, 8-8.11 years, 9-9.11 years, 10-10.11 years and 11- 11.11 years. The test material was developed using a corpora of 360 CVCV words which were taken from age appropriate Kannada textbooks and 50 words which were familiar to all the children. They were then randomly grouped into 2 phonetically balanced lists, containing 25 words each. List I was picturizable and list II was non picturizable. The lists were then filtered using a low pass band of 500 to 700 Hz and a high band pass of 1800 to 2000 Hz with the help of Goldwave digital audio editor software and presented at 40 dBSL (with reference to pure tone average) to one hundred children who participated in the study and normative data was collected. The data obtained was analysed for the presence of age and gender effect. The results showed that there was an improvement in the scores for both List I and List II with an increase in age. The scores for males and females were comparable for both List I and List II, which reflected that there was no gender effect.