Detecting sounds and discriminating between them are distinct hearing abilities.

Evidence

Pure-tone audiometry tests a subject’s ability to detect different frequencies, and the dBHL values indicate the extent to which the subject’s hearing is reduced at different frequencies. It thus indicates those frequency regions in which a subject is perhaps less sensitive than normally hearing listeners. This could, for example, be interpreted in practice in terms of timbral differences between specific musical sounds that might not be heard or vowel or other speech sounds that might be difficult to perceive. However, pure-tone audiometry does not provide a complete test of a subject’s hearing ability to discriminate between different sounds. Discrimination of sounds does start with the ability to detect the sounds, but it also requires appropriate sound processing to be available. For example, if the critical bands (see Section 2.2) are widened, they are less able to separate the components of complex sounds—the most important to us being speech. In order to test hearing discrimination, speech audiometry is employed that makes use of spoken material. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2369

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the detection-versus-discrimination distinction that separates pure-tone from speech audiometry.
• ADDENDUM: Widened critical bands failing to separate speech components parallels the auditory-filter compression discussion from earlier chapters on speech perception.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2369
• XREF: connects to: Auditory perception is a four-level hierarchy from detection to comprehension. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 157; Auditory detection and discrimination are distinct abilities that can diverge; Speech perception requires both detection and discrimination of sound components (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Hearing discrimination is measured phonetically by scoring correct speech sounds. #expands (0.80)
• Hearing and listening are meaningfully distinct experiences #corroborates (0.78) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 311