The clinical literature indicates that some persons with sensorineural hearing impairment show temporal integration functions that have relatively flat slopes when compared to subjects (Ss) with normal sensitivity. It is not clear whether temporal integration functions with reduced slopes are due to sensorineural hearing impairmentper se, or to the relatively high levels of signal required to measure the thresholds of these hearing‐impaired Ss. Therefore, temporal integration functions were obtained from four normal Ss in the presence of a masking noise of sufficient over‐all level (87 dB SPLre0.0002 dyn/cm2) to simulate moderate to severe hearing loss. The results indicate that temporal integration functions with a reduced slope are a consequence of sensorineural hearing impairment and are not due to the relatively high levels of signal required to measure threshold.