A particular theory of auditory word recognition predicts that high frequency words will be more intellible when presented in noise than low frequency words. In addition, the change in intelligibility caused by increasing the noise level will be more marked in the case of low frequency words. 100 high and 100 low frequency words are selected and presented in a different random order to each of 10 participants. Within this sequence, odd presentation trials were against a background noise level of 60 dB white noise and even presentation trials against a background noise level of 80 dB white noise. The participant had to identify each word and was given a percentage correct score for each of the four conditions: high frequency with 60 dB noise, high frequency with 80 dB noise, low frequency with 60 dB noise and low frequency with 80 dB noise.