1 The Permanente Medical Group, 4 G Street San Rafael, California
The subject of this communication is a modifled technique for hearing screening in young children that is quick, easy to use, and appears to be effective. In the original method described by Hardy, et al.,1 based on earlier work by Ewing and Ewing,2 the child sits on his mother's lap, facing another adult who attracts the child's attention with a toy. A third adult crouches behind the child, out of sight, and operates a variety of noise makers. The hearing child usually responds by turning his head toward the sound. This technique is most suitable for the 9-month to 18-month age group when the patient is too old for newborn screening techniques and too young for conventional audiometry and when deafness may not yet be suspected from failure of normal language development.