Abstract

Perception of sound is one of the most fascinating aspects in Human Physiology. The present work emphasizes the ability of the human beings to perceive the sound and also provides a comparison of such a perception with respect to variations in the nature of their occupation. Two tests namely Gap detection Test (GDT) and Frequency Response Test (FRT) are used to assess the hearing perception. 44 subjects, both males and females of various age groups and with no known auditory pathological history are considered for this study. MATLAB tool is used to generate tones with varying silence intervals, intensities as well as frequencies in GDT and FRT. Both the tests are administered in a silent noise free environment. The results show a clear difference in both the tests. However, the GDT provides a clear variation with respect to sex and not with respect to the occupational exposure. But FRT distinguishes the subjects who are occupationally exposed to noise as from those who are not and fails to distinguish between males and females with respect to their perception of sound. Hence one could conclude that FRT test is better than GDT with respect to hearing perception in case of occupational exposure to sound whereas GDT provides better differentiation of subjects with respect to age as well as sex but not for occupational exposure to noise.