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Absolute Threshold
The smallest amount of a stimulus that can be identified by an organism. The term is most often used in audiometry when determining an individual's threshold of hearing with psychophysical methods that were first developed by Gustav Fechner (1801–1877). The absolute threshold is not considered a discrete point but is marked by the percentage that an individual recognizes the presented sound correctly at the minimum sound level and a given frequency. The threshold of human hearing has been reported as 20 μPa (micropascals) for the frequency of 1,000 Hz (hertz). The human auditory system is best adapted to perceive stim uli between 1,000 and 5,000 Hz. For more information, see Gelfand (2004).
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