Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 19, 2026
Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Reference hearing threshold levels for chirp signals delivered by an ER-3A insert earphone
Kristian Gøtsche-Rasmussen1, Torben Poulsen, Claus Elberling
1Department of Electrical Engineering, Hearing Systems, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark.
Objective:
To establish reference hearing threshold levels for chirps and frequency-specific chirps.
Design:
Hearing thresholds were determined monaurally for broad-band chirps and octave-band chirps using the Etymotic Research, ER-3A insert earphone. The chirps were presented using two repetition rates, 20 and 90 stimuli/s, and with alternating polarity in blocks of one second duration. The test procedure and test conditions were in accordance with the recommendations given in ISO 389-9 (2009) . The ascending method ( ISO 8253-1, 2010 ) was applied using a step size of 5 dB. The chirps were played back from a Tucker Davies Technologies System II, and a Matlab program controlled the test setup. The results are specified in dB peak-to-peak equivalent threshold sound pressure levels (dB peETSPL).
Study Sample:
The test group consisted of 25 otologically-normal young adults (age 18-25 years).
Results:
The results are in good agreement with the results from another investigation of hearing thresholds using the same chirp stimuli, and the values for the octave-band chirps are in line with the standardized reference values for corresponding tone bursts ( ISO 389-6, 2007 ).
Conclusions:
The results of the present investigation are relevant for the international standard on short duration signals, ISO 389-6 (2007) .
Related Concept Videos
00:53Sound Intensity Level
The human ear can perceive an extensive range of sound intensity, necessitating the use of the logarithmic scale to define a physical quantity—the intensity level. It is a ratio of two intensities and hence a...
01:06Echo
Imagine the sound is reflected back to the ears. Assuming that the source is very close to the human, the difference between hearing the two sounds—the emitted sound and the reflected sound—may be more than the minimum time for perceiving distinct sounds. If this is the case, then the...