Binaural Interaction Component in Children using Click and Speech Stimuli

Abstract

The study was carried out with an aim of studying the maturational changes of binaural interaction component in children in the age range of 6-12 years using speech stimuli. In addition, the study also aimed to compare the maturational changes in binaural interaction component for speech and non speech stimuli. In the present study 100µs Click, and 40 ms CV syllable /da/, were used to elicit the responses. The binaural interaction component (BIC) was determined by subtracting the binaurally evoked auditory potentials from the sum of the monaural auditory evoked potentials. Results revealed that with maturation there is no significant difference in the latency and amplitude obtained for summed monaural, binaural and binaural interaction component for click stimulus. However, for the speech stimuli, latency of BIC for the I and II group was longer compared to the other groups. This was statistically significant compared to the other groups this indicated that the BIC for speech stimulus continues to develop till 8 years of age. However, the amplitude of BIC recorded for both stimuli i.e. the click and the speech stimulus had a large standard deviation for all the age groups. Hence, from the study it can be concluded that the BIC of auditory brainstem responses can be used to evaluate the binaural interaction in children, and latency of the BIC is a better parameter to evaluate the binaural interaction compared to the amplitude, as the amplitude of the BIC shows a very large variation.