The Hearing of School Children. A Statistical Study of Audiometric and Clinical Records

Longitudinal Study of Human Hearing: Its Relationship to Noise and Other Factors 2. Results from the First Three Years

“…Jordan and and Ciocco and Palmer (1941) reported a lack of systematic lateral differences in auditory thresholds. This is in agreement with the findings of others (Kodman et al, 1957;Lenihan et al, 1971;Carter et al, 1978).…”

“…Ciocco and Palmer (1941) reported hearing losses are about 2.5 times more common in boys than girls at high frequencies. Because this difference is present at each age, they considered factors associated with puberty could not be responsible.…”

“…OTOLOGICAL EXAMINATION Ciocco and Palmer (1941) reported that serial changes in thresholds are related to the later state but not the earlier state of the tympanic membrane and that this relationship occurred at medium frequencies only. Roberts and Federico (1972) reported data concerning the prevalence of ear, nose and throat abnormalities and their relationship to hearing threshold levels and medical events.…”

“…There is ample evidence this procedure lacks specificity and sensitivity, and that it is unreliable Fletcher, 1926, 1928;Rodin, 1927Rodin, , 1930Laurer, 1928;Burnap, 1929;Freund, 1932;Rowe and Drury, 1932;Partridge and MacLean, 1933;Rossell, 1933). Ciocco and Palmer (1941) did, however, obtain air conduction thresholds for about 1400 of their group (700 with hearing losses and 700 normal on testing with the phonographic audiometer). Also, they retested some children after intervals of 3 and 5 years.…”

“…These analyses show that when more data become available during the continuation of the study, and when curve fitting techniques are applied to longer runs of serial data, it is reasonable to expect a significant contribution will be made to understanding the development of hearing and the quantitative effects of environmental noise on the auditory thresholds of children. Ciocco and Palmer (1941) conducted a large scale investigation of 13,982 school children in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, most of their observations were made using a phonographic audiometer to test the hearing ability of the children, in groups of about forty.…”