Abstract
The ‘ascending and descending audiogram’ is a simple pure tone hearing test that exposes with a high degree of reliability those who are feigning bilateral deafness. The normal person has a marginally better pure tone audio-metric threshold when the stimuli are presented in descending levels of intensity, as compared to ascending intensities. The reverse situation applies with the malingerer where there usually is a 20-30dB difference between the audiometric graphs, with ascending levels of intensity indicating a better hearing threshold.