We describe an experiment using a chaotically driven metal plate with incremental damage. Damage in the plate is manifested as a local change in the plate’s response (loss of stiffness). We develop a statistical test for Holder continuity and demonstrate its use by examining the map between responses of the undamaged plate and responses of the damaged plate at various damage levels. We show that the statistical Holder test indicates loss of differentiable synchronization between responses as the plate is damaged and can thereby serve as a detector of structural damage in similar scenarios. © 2004 American Institute of Physics