The sound world of the child. The relationship between daily activities and hearing acuity.

A group of 50 first, fourth and sixth grade children provided diaries of their activities each hour of the day for 12 consecutive weeks. These activities were correlated with their auditory thresholds assessed at two different times during the behavioral recording period. The results indicated that these schoolchildren experience relatively little noise exposure during their normal daily activities. Further, the incidence of noisy activities was not closely related to hearing thresholds. Other behaviors that are relatively quiet, such as watching television, however, were predictive of higher auditory thresholds.