title: Psychoacoustic correlates of susceptibility to auditory fatigue.
abstract: The present study was designed to explore psychoacoustic correlates of susceptibility to auditory fatigue. Fifty-six normal-hearing subjects were given two monaural auditory fatigue tests. The high-frequency test consisted of a 3-min exposure to a 110 dB SPL, 2 kHz pure tone, with temporary threshold shift (TTS) measured at 4 kHz. The low-frequency test consisted of a 3-min exposure to a 115 dB SPL, 500 Hz pure tone, with TTS measured at 1 kHz. Amount of TTS and TTS recovery time were compared with performance on a test battery consisting of: (1) masking level differences; (2) brief-tone audiometry; (3) speech discrimination in noise; and (4) the threshold of octave masking test. A small negative correlation was found between amount of TTS and results of the threshold of octave masking test and the results of brief-tone audiometry. Subjects with larger amounts of TTS tended to have lower thresholds of octave masking and flattened threshold-duration functions.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001299:Audiometry; D001305:Auditory Fatigue; D005260:Female; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D006320:Hearing Tests; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests