The incidence of nonorganic hearing loss has increased considerably in the past several decades with greater opportunities to claim compensation for physical disability and injury. For this and other reasons, increasing attention has been given to the development of new and improved techniques for distinguishing nonorganic from organic hearing impairments.1,2
Methodologies for detecting nonorganic deafness were first introduced when there were few malingerers and no electron tubes. Now that both are abundant, the same tests are still widely and effectively used, though they are no longer considered sufficiently definitive for diagnostic purposes. It is evident that techniques are needed which not only differentiate nonorganic from organic losses, but which contribute to the establishment of organic threshold as well. To this end, the purpose of the present report is to describe the performance on objective speech audiometry of persons exhibiting nonorganic hearing loss.
With one notable exception, all of the