Psychometric functions for frequency discrimination from listeners with sensorineural hearing loss

Psychometric functions for pulsed pure-tone frequency discrimination were obtained from hearing-impaired listeners at frequencies with normal hearing and at frequencies with mild or moderate hearing losses. The general form of psychometric functions at hearing-impaired frequencies was found to be the same as at normal-hearing frequencies, i.e.,d' was linear with the frequency difference between tones, in Hz. For all but one psychometric function, the addition of an intercept term to the fitting equation did not account for significantly more variance than did the slope term alone. Therefore, it was concluded that psychometric functions for frequency discrimination can be adequately described with only one parameter: the slope of the psychometric function. Deficits in discrimination at hearing-loss frequencies were manifested by more gradual slopes of psychometric functions. Procedures for normalizing psychometric functions are presented, which facilitate comparisons of normal and impaired frequency discrimination data across studies and frequencies. Comparisons of dlf's (difference limen for frequency) obtained with adaptive and fixed procedures show a bias toward larger dlf's with adaptive procedures, but only at higher frequencies. A discussion of equal-interval and equal-ratio adaptive stepping rules indicates that an equal-ratio rule may be preferable.