J Am Acad Audiol
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Elderly listeners, as a group, do not perform as well as younger listeners on tests of word recognition, particularly in the presence of competing noise. It has been suggested that elderly listeners may be less willing to guess at items when they are unsure of the correct response, and as a result omit more responses. Omitting responses on word recognition tests may deflate word recognition scores. ⋯ The subjects responded to two lists of NU6 words, and numbers of omissions were recorded. The elderly group did not omit significantly more responses to word recognition test items than the younger group. Variability was high within both groups.
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The auditory brainstem response (ABR) is commonly used as a neonatal hearing screening tool. The degree to which myogenic and/or movement artifact can confound the ABR in neonates, and the effect this has on screening pass-fail rates, although widely recognized, have not been reported. This study addressed these aspects in a clinical setting. ⋯ Pass-fail rates between asleep and awake babies were significantly different (p less than 0.5), with the awake group displaying a much higher failure rate. There was no significant difference between the awake-calm and awake-active groups. Results indicate that activity state should be noted and considered along with the other factors that are generally blamed for false-positive results in neonatal ABR screenings.