Ling 6

I am writing this post to document my new understanding of the Ling 6.  It may not be very interesting for anyone else but it is important for me to make note of.

Ling 6 is a simple test designed to examine if a person has access to full range of speech sounds necessary for learning language.  This chart is from Cochlear.com.

Ling-6 Sound	Frequency it measures
m	/m/ is a very low frequency sound and if your child cannot hear this sound it is likely they will not have sufficient low frequency information to develop speech with normal prosody (tune) and without vowel errors.
oo	/oo/ – [u] has low frequency information.
ee	/ee/ – [i] has some low frequency information and some high frequency information.
ah	/ah/ – [a] is at the centre of the speech range.
sh	/sh/ is in the moderately high frequency speech range.
s	/s/ is in the very high frequency speech range.

http://www.cochlear.com/files/assets/Ling-6%20sound%20test%20-%20how%20to.pdf

There is a four level hierarchy of auditory skills with respect to sounds: detection, discrimination, identification and comprehension.  The Ling 6 can be used for the first three levels.

Detection- the awareness of a presence or absence of sound
Discrimination- the ability to tell if two sounds are the same or different
Identification- the ability to correctly label the sound that is heard
Comprehension- understand the meaning of the sound (bridges auditory perception with cognitive abilities)
http://www.audiologyonline.com/articles/article_detail.asp?article_id=728

For all my family (and anyone else worried about their children developing hearing loss), this is how you can test your own child's hearing abilities.  Saying these sounds at different intervals in a different order and having your child respond will show you what level they are at (at least in the first three levels) with auditory perception.

With my new implant, I am detecting each of the 6 sounds, discriminating about half and identifying inconsistently.  Good news is that means I have auditory access to the wide range of speech.  That makes me happy!