Benefits and Limits of the Ling 6 Sound Test in Pediatric Audiology

Acoustic amplification or cochlear implant surgery and habilitation can begin very early in life, in an attempt to maximise a given child’s potential for auditory, speech and language development. one of the greatest difficulties in evaluating the benefit of the early audiological intervention concerns the choice of the test and its validity.

The Ling 6 sounds test is administered to monitor the child’s ability to detect and/or to recognize each sound, representing a rapid check to confirm that the hearing devices are functional and to assist the therapist in estimating the child’s capacities across the auditory skills hierarchy: detection, discrimination and identification. The use of the Ling 6 sounds test is widespread, but its reliability and effectiveness are not well established.

The aim of this study is to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of the Ling 6 sound test.

The Ling 6 sounds were recorded in a sound treated room, within the premises of the Department of Audiology and Otolaryngology of the Institute for Maternal and Child Health IRCCS Burlo Garofolo. The phonemes were uttered by a professional actress who is a native Italian speaker. Spectral and cepstral analysis of the sounds were performed, in order to define the characteristics of the different phonemes and compare them.

Detection thresholds for the different phonemes cannot be considered as a predictor of availability for specific frequency bands, given the wide spectra of the sounds. If ‘heard’ or ‘not heard’ (i.e. detection) is the only evaluation criteria, it is not possible to determine if the subject has access to the whole frequency range of a sound or just a restricted part of it.