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Abstract
Today it is possible, by the use of newly developed tests, to diagnose cases of non-organic hearing loss with reasonable certainty. Having once decided that there may be non-organic elements, it is useful to supplement routine pure-tone and speech audiometry with a neurophysiological test like an ERA by means of which the auditory threshold can be established without the patients subjective judgement. A hearing loss which is apparent by routine pure-tone audiometry, but which is not evident after ERA is almost certainly non-organic, although confirmation of this state of affairs by other reliable tests is advisable. Measurement of the acoustic reflex thresholds and delayed speech feedback tests are both useful in this respect and rarely cause any confusion, except in some cases of true hearing loss in strongly recruiting ears.