Sounds & Shocks

If a child is born deaf, the sooner his handicap can be measured and treated, the better. The trouble is that methods of measuring deafness which work well enough with adults are of little use with the very young. At the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, doctors are using a method which gets around this difficulty by combining a midget electric shock and Pavlov's psychology of conditioning.

The child wears earphones and holds electrodes in his hands. At first the operator sends a strong sound signal through the phones and then gives the youngster a slight electric shock (only one stage stronger than a tickle). This makes the child's hands sweat so that they serve as better conductors of electricity, and the amount of current they conduct is recorded by an automatic inker.

After a few such sounds and shocks, the child is conditioned to associate the two. Next, he gets a sound signal but no electric shock. If his hands sweat again, it proves that he has heard the sound and is reacting to it just as he did when it was always followed by a shock. If the operator gives him such a weak sound signal that he cannot hear it, his hands do not sweat and the inker shows the limit of his hearing powers. Doctors at the infirmary have tried the sound and shock test on 500 children aged four months to ten years (most of them two to three years old) and found its results gratifying.

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