the existence of an auditory deficiency by itself compromises the normal development of a child , a time that the sensorial privation can generate alterations in diverse auditory abilities , including atention1 . thus , despite carrying children of this type of deficiency are duly inserted in a process of auditory rehabilitation , either making use of device of individual sonorous amplification ( aasi ) or of the cochlear implantation ( ic ) , beyond the speech therapy , these children can be citizens still to other problems , as those related to the auditory attention . identifying and to give attention to acoustic and phonetic aspects of the linguistics standards are essential for the acquisition and the development of the language , as much for children deficient normal listeners how much for the auditory ones . with the ability of deficit attention , these aspects can meet wronged , intervening with the pertaining to school , cognitive and social performance of children2 . the attention is a neuropsychological basic function that is underlying to all the cognitive processes . it can be defined as the capacity of the individual to select and to focus its mental processes in some aspect of the internal or external environment , answering predominantly to the stimulations that it are significant and inhibiting answers to excessively stimulus3 
 4 . the literature reported that the supported attention and the monitoring are some of the processes that characterize the attention ability . the supported attention is defined as the capacity to keep the attentional focus in one determined stimulation , for a period of time , to execute a task4 
 5 . the use of the test of ability of auditory attention supported - ( thaas)6 
 7 , carried through in conventional way , with auricular phones , has shown an efficient and promising tool to evaluate this important ability in the different clinical entities , auditory deficiency8 , cleft palate fiction9 , velocardiofacial syndrome10 and phonological upheaval11 . the thaas is based on the test of continuous performance , acpt - auditory continuous performance test 
 12 , which is used clinically to measure the auditory attention , thus , requires that the citizen focuses and supports the attention during all the test and answers for a target stimulation previously specified13 . with intention to evaluate this important auditory ability in children who make use of electronic devices , as well as the those that are not collaborators in the use of auricular phones , during the accomplishment of a behavioral evaluation ; throughout years of clinical experience with this population , it was thought about verifying the applicability of the thaas not only using its conventional way . the objective of this work is to compare the performance of children in the thaas as for the different forms of presentation , with auricular phones ( conventional way ) and in free field ; to the sort and , to the application order , aiming at its posterior application to those that do not allow the rank of auricular phones , that make use of aasi or ic . this work was developed in the clinic of phonoaudiology of the college of odontology of bauru of the university of so paulo , having been submitted to the approval for the committee of ethics in research in human beings under seeming in the n 157/2007 . in order to select the casuistry for this study , that is , children of seven years the seven years and 11 months , with absence of complaint and/or auditory alteration , without intellectual commitment , and description of carelessness , were made contact with pertaining to school parents , in order to carry through invitation its children , pertaining to this age to participate of the study . after the acceptance the children had been perhaps placed and paired the next possible one how much to the sort . the chosen age must it the fact of being an age of great importance for the learning , period of literacy , whose ability of attention becomes essential . after the reading and the signature of the term of free and clarified assent , the parents and/or responsible had been submitted to the attention questionnaire , aiming at to get information how much to the personal dates ; how much to the presence of neurological problems or other deficiencies ; how much to the auditory health , the mannering and academic aspects related to the manifestation or complaints of carelessness of the child . after , all the children had been submitted to the visual inspection of the acoustic meatus , to the immittance testing , by means of the use of image resources gsi tympstar ; to the audiometry preliminary tonal , using the audiometer siemens sd50 , with auricular phones and in cabin acoustics ; to the threshold of reception of speech / srt and to the audiometric in free field , carried through in the audiometer clinical audiometer ac40 . it was considered as criterion of inclusion in the present study : equal age has seven years the seven years and 11 months . attainment of a total scores of errors ( total punctuation ) equal or inferior the 36 and decrease of lesser monitoring that eight in the thaas ( conventional ) . of the total of 106 met children , data of 40 of them could have been computed in this work , in view of the established criteria of inclusion . the participation of these 40 children was determined as being significant sampling number for the development of the research , being , therefore , this the minimum number of children predetermined will participate of this study . thus , was performed a randomized study in the 40 voluntary children , being 11 of masculine sort and nine of the feminine one , as much for the g1 as for the g2 , applying the thaas in different sequences of accomplishment . in the first half ( 20 children ) , this test in the conventional way was applied first , in cabin acoustics and with auricular phones . later , after 15 days of interval ( time suggested for keith 
 12 ) , the test was reapplied then , in the same children , however , in free field , being this called group in study one ( g1 ) ; e in the other half ( 20 children ) the process was the inverse one , first the thaas in free field was applied , and after the interval of minimum time of 15 days , the test was applied again , however , of this second time in cabin acoustics , with auricular phones , determined as group in study two ( g2 ) ( figure 1 ) . the inquiry protocol was composed of the mannering test ( test of ability of auditory attention supported - thaas ) that evaluates the ability of supported auditory attention , presented in two forms , with auricular phones ( conventional way ) and in free field . the thaas6 consists in a method of objective information to describe and to evaluate the behavior of auditory attention in children , by means of the evaluation of the ability of the child to listen to auditory stimulations during a period of drawn out time and to only answer for a specific stimulation . it is a task of auditory monitoring , indicated for the correct answers for the specific linguistics tracks , and serves to measure the attention supported , indicated for the ability of the child in keeping the attention and concentration in the task for a period of drawn out time . they consist of the binaural and diotic presentation of a list of 21 monosyllabic words ( foot , yes , flower , goal , train , sea , sun , want , badly , wool , ox , mine , salt , father , gas , go , sky , not , already , dust and one ) , which are repeated and rearranged randomly , forming a list of 100 words including the 20 occurrences of the white word  not  . this list , recorded in cd , is presented six times uninterruptedly , totalizing , of this form , 600 monosyllabic words , with duration of 10 minutes . the presentation of the test gave to an intensity of 50 dbns , considering the average of the auditory aerial thresholds ( 500hz , 1khz and 2 khz ) of each ear . each child was instructed verbally by the appraiser of whom she would hear a list of words and that all time would have to raise the hand that heard the word  not  . previously to the first presentation of the list of 600 words of test thaas , was presented to the child , for practical , a recorded sample in cd , of 50 monosyllabic and presented words , also , uninterruptedly , being 10 of them the word  not  , made use in random way . after the child to only have understood the task , the test then was applied . the application of the test gave by means of a disc man 40  +  sec . virtual antishock of toshiba , with exit line out , connected to an audiometer , audiometer sd 50 for application with auricular phones , and the audiometer clinical audiometer ac40 for application in free field . for application of the thaas in free , take care of field with regard to the treat environment acoustically was preset and kept the angles of incidence of the signal in all the measures , being that the child was located 60 azimuth of the two boxes of sound laterally , with distance of 2 meters , forming an equilateral triangle , thus the incidence of the sound was same for both the ears ; beyond the researcher to have kept intent to the physical and psychological conditions of the child during the test ( figure 2 ) the data had been analyzed in view of the answers gotten in the thaas with auricular phones in cabin acoustics and free field . to determine the performance of the child in this test , the errors of carelessness had been considered , when the child did not raise the hand in reply to the white word (  not  ) ; errors of impulsiveneness , when the child raise the hand for another word on the contrary of the white word (  not  ) ; the counting of the number of errors of carelessness increased of the number of errors of impulsiveneness allowed to get the total punctuation of errors of the thaas . the monitoring was gotten calculating the number of correct answers for the word  not  during the sequence of the six presentations . the calculation of this measure was necessary , in order to verify the decrease of the monitoring , i.e. , the decline in the attention that occurred with the time during the monitoring task , that will be gotten calculating the number of correct answers for the word  not  in 1 presentation not deducting the number from correct answers for 6 presentation . following given normative6 for the age of seven years the waited average value for the errors of carelessness is 31 , for the impulsiveneness is eight , for the total punctuation is 36 and for the decrease of monitoring a lesser value that eight . for the analysis of the results , the blind double character was adopted , not being possible to the researcher to identify the test application way ( with phones or in free field ) in order to prevent that the results have been vitiated or tendentious . following the considered objective , the results of the thaas had been analyzed and computed in order to become fulfilled later the comparison of the gotten data intra - citizens ( with the same children ) at two moments : 1 in the presentation with auricular phones in cabin acoustics and 2 in free field ( not necessarily in this same order ) . to evaluate the performance between the groups and sort , the used statistical tests had been the analysis of variance ( anova ) and the tukey test . for these analyses , was used the pacotico cd , version 4.616 . the quantitative variable had been represented by average , medium , shunting line standard and minimum and maximum values . in all the tests , the level of rejection of the adopted hypothesis of nullity was of 5% ( p following the considered objectives , table 1 presents the performance ( average and shunting line standard ) of the children of the two showed groups , in the application of the thaas in the situation with auricular phones and free field . the variance analysis to three criteria did not present significant difference enters the sorts in none of the conditions or groups ( p  >  0,05 ) . table 2 presents the comparison between forms in the same condition when applied on the first time , and the table 3 , when applied in the second time . * - statistical significant difference ( p  <  0,05 ) * - statistical significant difference ( p  <  0,05 ) . ns - statistical not significant difference . thus , when applied for the first time only had difference between phone and field in the carelessness ( p  =  0,049 ) , not having difference in the second application . comparison also was carried through between first and second time , in the same form of application ( tables 4 and 5 ) . * - statistical significant difference ( p  <  0,05 ) . ns - statistical not significant difference . for the condition in free field there was a general trend of reduction of the values in the second time , however with significance statistics only for the monitoring decrease ( p  =  0,001 ) . for the condition with phone also had a general trend of reduction of the values in the second time , however with significance statistics only for the carelessness ( p  =  0,024 ) and total of errors ( p  =  0,011 ) . as for the interval of covered time the application of the thaas enters in phone and in field in the g1 and the g2 , a maximum of 360 and a minimum of 25 days for the g1 and 75 and 15 days for the g2 were verified , revealing more heterogeneous for the g1 and more homogeneous for the g2 . the absence of found significant difference for the sorts is concordant with works found in specific literature17 
 18 
 6 
 8 
 19 . on the other hand , research demonstrates performance of the feminine sort better when compared with masculine20 
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 24 , fact this explained due to bigger difficulty to diagnosis children of the feminine sort for the attentional deficit , for present less exacerbated behaviors of what the masculine sort25 . research refer26 that the ability of auditory attention of women is better because they obtain to keep it , exactly for a stimulation without meaning as the noise . authors20 had described , still , that the difference with regard to the attention between the sorts diminishes with the advance of the age . the thaas is a based national test in an american test , auditory continuous performance test ( acpt ) , used in a series of clinical studies29 
 30 
 31 
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 34 . keith12 verified by means of this test ( acpt ) that the errors of carelessness had been three times more frequent than the errors of impulsiveneness . feniman 
 6 found ratio average of 3,5 . in the present study in the g1 the ratio found for the comparative errors of carelessness to the ones of impulsiveneness was similar , except for the situation of application in free field in the masculine sort , in which was verified average of errors of equal carelessness the 4,6 and errors of equal impulsiveneness the 4,2 ( table 1 ) . the difference found between the g1 and the g2 ( with regard to the gotten values adding the averages of the number of errors for phone and field ) possibly must to the difference of the interval of covered time between the two forms of application . although in both the groups the performance of the children has been better in the second presentation of the test , comparing the performance of the g1 with the g2 with phone and in free field ( table 1 ) , considering the two presentations , the scores of g2 had values next than in the g1 , what it could be explained being based on the hypothesis of the difference of interval of time in the two groups , or , also , it can be that has been to perhaps . being based on the gotten results , in the comparison between the groups , it was observed that the g1 had greater number of errors that the g2 in the application with phone for the entire item of the thaas , being statistical significant for carelessness and total of errors . on the basis of the findings of the g1 , could be thought that the situation of application of the test in free field acted as facilitator of the test , for having been verified better performance of the children . thus being , the cabin acoustics used for application of the test with phones was reason of distraction in the children , therefore there was little visual contact with the appraiser in this situation , differently in the situation in free field where it has greater proximity in the situation , a time that the environment acoustically treated was the same for the appraiser and the child . in the application with phones , the child was evaluated in a cabin acoustics , in which the appraiser met of the side of is , observing the child only for a small glass viewfinder , what he could diminish the motivation of the child during the evaluation situation . however , as in the g2 , in which the application of the thaas occurred first in field , and in the moment with phone and the children they had presented performance with phone better of what in field , was observed the same performance standard ( better in the second application ) - tables 2 and 3 . the same can be thought for the comparison between the groups for application of the thaas in free field , a time that the g2 presented more errors that the g1 for all the item of the test ( being this difference significant statistical for the monitoring decrease ) . valley to stand out that in the g2 the first application was in free field and in the g1 was the second application that occurred in free field , where the children could already be made familiar to the test . in the accomplishment of the test - retest of the acpt gotten for keith 
 12 , this did not verify significant difference statistics between first and the second time where the test was applied ( intra - citizens ) . it is standed out , still , that the two applications of the test in the work of keith 
 12 had been gotten with the same form of presentation ( only with phones ) , differently of the present research . these data are in agreement with the findings of reseracher18 that had verified a better average performance in the second presentation of a list that evaluated selective attention , believing that this fact must the learning effect . in neural terms , the performance of certain trained activities previously ( or perhaps of ampler form , the context ) must pre - activate the neural nets , in way that the fruit of its processing pass to have priority for the attentional systems35 . the use of a fortuitous or random process in order to grant to the participants of a determined studies the same probability to receive the intervention to be tested or the control , revolutionized the practical clinic when having been used for the first time in the end of the 40 's . more recently , the randomized clinical assays come being described as the  standard - gold  in the evaluation of therapeutically questions in health . by means of this type of study the beginning of randomization is simple , and it bases on the fact from that the participants of determined study have the same probability to receive in such a way the intervention to be tested how much the control36 . if this principle is respected and carried through in adjusted way , the randomization reduces the risk of bias quality controls ( or bias ) , producing a balance between the diverse factors of risk that can influence in the clinical outcome to be measured37 . it is believed that the randomization of this study was the process that assented these findings , allowing concluding about the learning effect , as they had demonstrated the results . however , authors38 , studying the attention in children , verified that with the repetition of the test the children who had been better at a first moment , had become more impulsive and less intent in the second presentation , being opponent with the results verified for the g1 as for the g2 , seen one better performance in the second application of the test , justifying for the effect of the learning . agreeing to the results of this work , the application of the p300 revealed viable in free field , not presenting significant differences statistical for the sort and way of presentation of test39 . the performance of children in the thaas revealed similar in the different applied forms of presentation , however , better scores had been observed in the second presentation . the children of the feminine sort and the masculine had not differed score of the thaas for the two forms of presentation .
summary 
 introduction :  the attention is an underlying neuropsychology function to all the cognitive processes . the auditory deficiency compromises the normal development of the child , modifying diverse auditory abilities , including the attention . 
 objective :  to compare the performance of children in the test of the ability of auditory attention support , as for the different forms of application ( auricular phones and free field ) , sort and , application order . 
 method :  40 children ( 7 years old ) voluntary with typical development had participated , divided in two groups : g1 and g2 , composites of 20 children each . 
 the application of the thaas in the g1 if gave first with auricular phones and after that in free field and the g2 the process was inverse . 
 the evaluation consisted in : specific questionnaire , auditory tests and application of the thaas . 
 results :  it did not have significant difference how much to the sort . for the thaas with phones , the g1 presented greater amount of errors of carelessness and total punctuation . for the thaas in field it had a significant difference of the g2 for the monitoring decrease . 
 how much to the application form , the g1 demonstrated a bigger number of errors when it was used phones . 
 the g2 did not demonstrate difference . 
 conclusion :  it had viability in the application of the thaas in free field , being able to be adopted the same used normative values for the conventional way of evaluation .