Temporal Resolution: performance of school-aged children in the GIN - Gaps-in-noise test

ABSTRACT: Time resolution hearing skill is the minimum time necessary to solve acoustic events, which is fundamental for speech understanding, and which may be assessed by gap-detection tests, such as the Gaps-in-noise test (GIN). AIM: the purpose of this study was to verify the performance of time processing ability in children with no hearing and/or education difficulties by applying the GIN test in both genders and ages from 8 to 10 years. STUDY DESIGN: a prospective cross-sectional contemporary cohort. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The GIN test was applied to 75 school-aged children separated into three groups by age. RESULTS: The findings showed no statistical differences among age groups or ears. Males had slightly better responses than females on the percentage of correct responses only. CONCLUSION: The gap threshold and percentage of correct responses were calculated regardless of the ear, gender or age, and were respectively 4.7ms and 73.6%. Based on a 95% confidence interval, the cut-off criterion for normal and abnormal performance was 6.1ms for the mean gap detection threshold and 60% for the percentage of correct responses.