Anecdotally, it can be a very distressing experience. When I was in elementary school I had a hearing test, and as the test went on I could hear fewer and fewer

Anecdotally, it can be a very distressing experience. When I was in elementary school I had a hearing test, and as the test went on I could hear fewer and fewer of the tones. The nurse got increasingly surprised and worried, "really, you can't hear that? what about this one? really?" I was nearly in tears, thinking that I was nearly deaf and somehow didn't know. Turns out my hearing was fine - the batteries in the hand-held device were nearly dead. (I do have some auditory-processing difficulties, but those were not measured by this test.)