Despite being a foundational area of interest for those concerned with the accurate assessment of hearing (and for those attempting to learn about audiometry), the topic of masking as an energetic research area has slowed over the past twenty to thirty years. Also, instructional writing on masking has been relegated to a single chapter within combined textbooks that cover a multitude of topics. A review of these revealed that the writing/content about masking tended to be quite similar from author to author. The last edition of the “Katz Handbook of Clinical Audiology” was published in 2015. The most recent textbook that included masking as a prioritized topic was from 2009: heavy on the audiometry and quite light on the masking portion. Until this presenter published a textbook in 2023, the last book solely dedicated to the topic of masking came out 30 years ago in 1996. A scoping review of the masking literature was completed over a 10-year period as part of the textbook project. Reviewed materials included writings and research from 1924 to 2022. Findings included:  forming a realistic perspective of interaural attenuation that avoids simplistic notions, identification of the “sitIA,” and updated perspectives on occlusion, central masking, and masking for speech.

Learning Objectives:

1. To reflect on how raw, research data have been interpreted and reported at scale and how this has informed the contemporary practice of audiometric masking.
2. To identify new ideas connected to the practice of masking on topics that include: central masking, situational interaural attenuation, the Optimized Method of masking, bone-conduction, and why the term attenuation may be misleading.
3. To compare content from this discussion to their own practice.