Temporal Processing Test: Analysis Facility by Subject

Introduction: The auditory temporal ordering ability refers to the processing of multiple auditory stimuli, and these are influenced by order of their occurrence in time. This ability has many perceptual and cognitive processes participants. This way it is considered one of the most important functions of the central nervous system since the speech and language understanding are dependent on the capacity to work with the sound sequence.

Objective: To identify the level of difficulty encountered by the subject for performing temporal tests.

Methods: This is a descriptive, quantitative, and transversal study. The sample was composed of 30 subjects with normal hearing and no complaints about auditory processing, aged between 17 to 38 years, average 29 years. They were submitted to temporal ordering test with musical tone (flute) called Melodic Duration Pattern Test and Melodic Frequency Pattern Test (Taborga, 1997), applied under three modalities of response (verbal, humming, and motor), and performed on the same date. For this, the subject was asked first to recognize the verbally stimuli, by following characterizing stimuli in an imitative pattern, and finally recognize the stimuli with manual responses. This work is part of the biggest project developed by a Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. After conclusion of each test, the subject was presented a visual analogic scale (VAS) to identify the difficulty of each modality.

Results: The analysis found that 77% of subjects reported that the Melodic Test was the easiest, the Auditec 74% as intermediate, and 94% Pure Tone as more difficult.

Conclusion: The subjects consider Melodic Test the easiest. Upon these findings it is evident that when the Audiologist receives an individual for temporal ordering evaluation, he must examine the condition of this subject to choose the best test.