Booth Testing

Logan sees his Audiologist to MAP (program them to to fit his needs) his equipment every couple months to make sure he is getting the maximum benefit from his equipment. We also see her to go into the sound booth and test the MAPs to make sure he is still responding appropriately with his new programs.

I've been wanting to post some videos of Logan's Sound Booth testing for a very long time, but I always seem to forget about actually recording a session until it is almost over.  Luckily, last week our wonderful Parent Infant Advisor recorded it for us and gave us the video! And of course, he wasn't as cooperative as he usually is this time.  He must have known I wanted to share this with you.

This video is the part of the testing where he was actually cooperating some.  We have taught him to hold up a toy (in this case, a puzzle piece) to his ear and listen for a sound. When he hears the sound, he puts the puzzle piece in the puzzle, or for other toys, he may be instructed to drop it in a bucket, etc. 

He kept trying to distract us from what we were doing, and at one time, he kept pointing to where Marci, his Audiologist sits just outside the booth, and saying that she was hiding.

But the thing that really had him distracted was a cupcake puzzle that he absolutely loves.  Every time we are at our appointments at Sunshine Cottage he looks for this toy and does not want to let it go. Every time he was asked to put the cupcake down when he heard the sound, he would not. And at one point, he was even holding 4 cupcakes up to his ear!

 I will try to capture some more video of him when he actually participates more.

Audio Update

Today Logan was scheduled to do sound booth testing at Sunshine Cottage.  During these sessions, Logan, his advisor Lindsay, and I sit in a sound proof booth while Marci, his audiologist, will play tones at different decibels and frequencies to measure what he can and cannot hear.  We usually do this every 3 months or so but it had been a while since Logan managed to get sick every time we were on the schedule.

I am so proud of how well he did today.  Not only did he cooperate long enough for Marci to get all the information she needed, but he is doing phenomenally well with his implants and learning to listen.  We were able to keep him entertained long enough to listen and respond to those boring tones for about half an hour.  Anyone with experience with a 21 month old toddler knows that this is no small feat!  We actually thought we lost his attention about 10 minutes in but were able to get him back into it.

The last time we did a booth session, he was responding behaviorally between 20 and 25 decibels (around the sound of a whisper).  This time, he responded between 10 and 20 decibels, with 10 being the sound of breathing. The great thing about these results is that his hearing is measured by his behavioral responses so it is not necessarily his threshold for hearing.  But what is even more amazing and what had me totally floored is that Marci actually got a response twice (once at the beginning and once at the end of the session) at 0 db, which is almost complete silence. Lindsay and I didn't even hear that one!

Below is his latest audiogram, which is simply a graph that shows a person's hearing thresholds for various frequencies.  When Logan had his hearing aids, his thresholds were always inside or below the greyed out area, meaning he did not have access to a lot of the sounds in the English language. But now, as you can see, he has access to most / all the sounds in the English language and basically has better than "normal hearing."