Discrimination of frequency ramps in subjects with cochlear hearing loss.

The auditory sensitivity for detecting linear frequency sweeps of a continuous pure tone has been studied in ten young subjects with cochlear hearing loss. The mean thresholds were elevated by a factor of 2.8 as compared with a normal group over the whole range of ramp durations studied (10-500 msec). The results show that this elevation is most likely caused mainly by the cochlear lesion per se, other possible factors having only a minor effect. No clear correlations could be found between thresholds for frequency change and results of other pure tone audiometric tests. Such tests thus cannot predict a subject's frequency discrimination.