David M. Green
Psychoacoust. Lab., Psychol. Dept., Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-2065
A maximum-likelihood procedure for estimating threshold in a yes--no task is presented. The absolute thresholds at six audiometric frequencies for a group of normal-hearing listeners were measured using this procedure. The average standard deviation of the threshold estimate is less than 5 dB with only 12 trials per threshold estimate. The total time taken to measure the audiogram was less than 3 min. The estimate of false-alarm rate is poor and strongly biased, but can be considerably improved by a simple modification that increases the testing time about 25%. [Research supported by National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.]