Hearing test

Passed mine.. stood ten feet away from the doc and she whispered the number 7 and then 10..

 

A "whisper test"? I thought until now that was an "at home thing"!?! She whispers-I have no idea what she said so just say yes-she laughs and we go to sleep..

 

The whisper test, if done as instructed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's instructions, is standardized. The instruction is to the examiner:

Stand off to the side of the examinee, same side as the ear being tested. (The other ear has to be covered.) Completely exhale, THEN whisper something. Avoid sibilants ("s" sounds). The whisper test, if done right, corresponds to a hearing level of 40 dB, which is about the ambient sound in a room with a quiet air-conditioner.

If the examinee fails the whisper test, then do audiometry. The average dB level of the better ear must be 40 dB or better with levels averaged over frequencies 500, 1000, and 2000 hz. These frequencies, incidentally, are where you hear vowels. The consonants are at the higher frequencies. Noise induced hearing loss occurs at around 6000 hz. If you lose the high frequency, all you'll hear is vowels, and heard speech will be gibberish.

Back to the whispered voice test: If you need hearing aids and flunk the whispered voice test, the average clinic can't do audiometry with hearing aides. The ear muffs for the test result in horrendous feed-back. Audiogram with hearing aides has to be done by an audiologist.

I usually whisper words that are very familiar, and begin with a "C". "California" comes to mind. Also, "Connecticut". When I whispered "Sacramento", nobody seemed to understand me. It's the "s" sound that's the problem. Changed to "C" sounds. Works better. In sixteen years, if I remember correctly, only two persons failed to pass.