AN INVESTIGATION OF THE VALIDITY OF HIGH-FREQUENCY AUDITION

A masking experiment is used to explore the validity of high-frequency audition. Threshold shifts produced by a narrow-band noise with sharp filter slopes and variable center frequency are determined for pure-tone stimuli from 8000 to 14,000 Hz. Subjects are young adults with normal hearing from 250 through 800 Hz, and with high-frequency thresholds comparable to those obtained in a previously conducted normative survey. The experimental results, as demonstrated by release-from-masking functions, are consistent with the expectation of increased masker effectiveness as the center frequency of the masker approximates the test frequency. The findings suggest that responses to high-frequency auditory stimulation are the result of high-frequency perception, and not the perception of some lower frequency distortion process.