Six subjects with an acoustic reflex and six subjects without an acoustic reflex were exposed on separate occasions to a 710‐Hz pure tone and to a18‐octband noise with an upper cutoff frequency of 710 Hz. Both exposures were 10 min at 110 dB sound‐pressure level. Temporary threshold shift (TTS) was measured at 1000 Hz. For the subjects with an acoustic reflex, the pure‐tone exposure produced 10 dB more TTS2than the noise exposure. However, for the subjects without an acoustic reflex, the pure‐tone exposure and the noise exposure produced the same amounts of TTS. These results support the hypothesis that low‐frequency pure tones produce more TTS than low‐frequency bands of noise because of the differential effects of the acoustic reflex in responding to these two types of sounds.