Auditory Responsiveness of Premature Infants Utilizing Visual Reinforcement Audiometry (VRA)

The purpose of this investigation was to study the relationship between visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) performance and age (i.e., corrected and mental) with 60 premature infants. VRA performance was classified as unacceptable, marginal, or acceptable based on conditionability and number of responses obtained before habituation to the task. The results indicated that mental age and corrected age were significantly related to VRA performance. It was found that a corrected age of 8 mo and/or a mental age of 6 mo is typically required for acceptable performance using VRA. A lack of responsiveness to the VRA procedure at these ages would most likely be due to hearing loss as opposed to a general developmental delay. The data from this study would not support a large scale behavioral hearing screening program for premature infants below 8 mo corrected age or 6 mo mental age.