Objective: Spectral- and temporal-resolution tests are seldom used in clinical practice despite their proven relevance for patients' speech understanding in noise and expected importance for hearing-aid fitting. The aim here was to investigate and compare two clinically applicable tests ('tone test' and 'sweep test') that measure both spectral and temporal resolution simultaneously.
Design: Experiments were conducted monaurally via headphones. After examining test-retest reliabilities and learning effects we compared results from tone and sweep tests to results from conventional spectral and temporal-resolution tests and to speech perception in noise scores.
Study sample: A group of five normal-hearing listeners (aged 18-42 years, median 19) and 15 (sensorineurally) hearing-impaired listeners (aged 20-68 years, median 56).
Results: It was found that the tone test corresponded much better to the conventional methods than the sweep test. Relating spectral and temporal-resolution results to speech perception in noise scores showed that the tone test seems to be slightly more relevant for speech perception than the sweep test.
Conclusions: It can be concluded that the tone test (after modifications we suggest, based on our findings) is a fast and reliable test that is suitable for measuring spectral and temporal resolution in a clinical setting.