Békésy audiometry /bek″əsē/ [George von Békésy, Hungarian-American physicist and Nobel laureate, 1899–1972] , a type of hearing test in which the subject controls the intensity of the stimulus by pressing a button while listening to a pure tone whose frequency slowly moves through the entire audible range. The intensity diminishes as long as the button is pressed. When the intensity is too low for the subject to hear the tone, the button is released and the intensity begins to increase. When the subject again hears the tone, the button is again pressed, yielding a zigzag tracing. Continuous and interrupted tones are used, and the tracings of the two are compared. The test may be used to differentiate between hearing losses of cochlear and neural origins.
