Differences Between Sensory and Neural Hearing Losses

Speech discrimination

Moderate decrement

Severe decrement

Discrimination with increasing sound intensity

Usually improves up to a point, depending on the severity and distribution of loss of sensory elements

Deteriorates

Recruitment in which the perception of sound is exaggerated, especially at louder sound levels

Present

Absent

Acoustic reflex decay in which the acoustic reflex response is reduced over time during a measurement

Absent or mild

Present

Waveforms in auditory brain stem responses

Well formed with normal latencies for mild to moderate hearing losses; reduced for more severe losses

Absent or with abnormally long latencies

Otoacoustic emissions

Absent

Present