Audiograms flatten the curved hearing threshold into a straight reference line

Evidence

People with normal hearing acuity usually can follow a conversation with their friends at a noisy party, a phenomenon known as the “cocktail party effect” (Cherry 1953 ). This remarkable ability to attend to target sounds in background noise deteriorates with age and hearing loss. Yet, people who have been diagnosed in the clinic as having a very mild hearing loss or even normal hearing based on their pure tone audiogram (the clinical gold standard for identifying hearing loss) still often report considerable difficulty communicating with others in such noisy environments (King and Stephens 1992 ). The conventional pure tone audiogram, the cornerstone of hearing loss diagnosis, is not always the best predictor for these kinds of difficulties. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5758 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Békésy audiometry derives hearing thresholds from button-press tracking of a swept tone; The audiogram normalizes hearing data so deviations from typical are visually obvious; Pure tone audiograms fail to predict speech-in-noise listening difficulties — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5758 (+1 more)

Related

• Pure tone audiograms fail to predict speech-in-noise listening difficulties (similarity 0.91)
• Psychophysical and EEG measures predict speech-in-noise ability better than pure-tone audiometry (similarity 0.84)
• Audiometric hearing loss maps directly onto missed timbral and speech-sound differences (similarity 0.83)
• Békésy audiometry derives hearing thresholds from button-press tracking of a swept tone (similarity 0.83)
• Audiograms test pure-tone detection because pure tones are maximally frequency-specific (similarity 0.83)
• The audiogram measures only detection thresholds, so it misses everyday speech-in-noise ability. (similarity 0.83)
• The audiogram does not predict pitch perception deficits in hearing loss (similarity 0.82)
• The audiogram fails as a robust indicator of perceptual deafness deficits (similarity 0.81)
• Hearing thresholds add almost no predictive power beyond age and encoding measures (similarity 0.81)
• Perceptual deficits correlate poorly with audiogram thresholds and vary widely (similarity 0.81)
• The audiogram only captures detection thresholds and fails to predict real-world speech perception (similarity 0.81)
• Clinically normal hearing still shows age-linked decline that affects speech perception (similarity 0.81)
• The audiogram is a behavioral test rooted in a century of psychoacoustics (similarity 0.81)
• Pure tones are the standard audiometric stimulus because they are frequency-specific. (similarity 0.81)
• Pure-tone audiometry measures hearing thresholds at six standard frequencies (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Pure tone audiograms fail to predict speech-in-noise listening difficulties #qualifies (0.80) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5758
• Hearing thresholds are clinically tested at octave-spaced frequencies covering the speech range #expands (0.75)