Can You Hear Out the Melody? Testing Musical Scene Perception in Young Normal-Hearing and Older Hearing-Impaired Listeners.

Kai Siedenburg,Saskia Röttges,Kirsten C Wagener,Volker Hohmann

doi:10.1177/2331216520945826

Kai Siedenburg, Saskia Röttges + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1177/2331216520945826

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Abstract

It is well known that hearing loss compromises auditory scene analysis abilities, as is usually manifested in difficulties of understanding speech in noise. Remarkably little is known about auditory scene analysis of hearing-impaired (HI) listeners when it comes to musical sounds. Specifically, it is unclear to which extent HI listeners are able to hear out a melody or an instrument from a musical mixture. Here, we tested a group of younger normal-hearing (yNH) and older HI (oHI) listeners with moderate hearing loss in their ability to match short melodies and instruments presented as part of mixtures. Four-tone sequences were used in conjunction with a simple musical accompaniment that acted as a masker (cello/piano dyads or spectrally matched noise). In each trial, a signal-masker mixture was presented, followed by two different versions of the signal alone. Listeners indicated which signal version was part of the mixture. Signal versions differed either in terms of the sequential order of the pitch sequence or in terms of timbre (flute vs. trumpet). Signal-to-masker thresholds were measured by varying the signal presentation level in an adaptive two-down/one-up procedure. We observed that thresholds of oHI listeners were elevated by on average 10 dB compared with that of yNH listeners. In contrast to yNH listeners, oHI listeners did not show evidence of listening in dips of the masker. Musical training of participants was associated with a lowering of thresholds. These results may indicate detrimental effects of hearing loss on central aspects of musical scene perception.

Highlights

It is well known that hearing loss compromises auditory scene analysis abilities, as is usually manifested in difficulties of understanding speech in noise
One participant from the younger normal-hearing (yNH) group was discarded from the sample because of a pure-tone average (PTA) higher than 20 dB hearing level (HL); another yNH participant was discarded because it turned out this participant was not a German native speaker, which was problematic for the German speech intelligibility test
That means, parsing musical scenes may be very difficult for older HI (oHI) listeners, and future hearing devices may need to be optimized to account for this problem

Summary

Introduction

It is well known that hearing loss compromises auditory scene analysis abilities, as is usually manifested in difficulties of understanding speech in noise. Musical training of participants was associated with a lowering of thresholds These results may indicate detrimental effects of hearing loss on central aspects of musical scene perception. In what seems to be an effortless process, these musical elements are organized by the human auditory system according to principles of auditory scene analysis (ASA; Bregman, 1990) These principles yet may cause difficulties for individuals with hearing loss. Research on music perception has not addressed the effects of moderate forms of hearing impairment on musical scene analysis This is remarkable, given ASA’s critical role in hearing impairment: Disentangling simultaneous streams of sound—such as voices at a crowded (cocktail) party (Cherry, 1953)—is the key challenge for HI individuals. We present an experiment that taps into two central faculties of music listening: the perception of pitch sequences (or melodies) and the perception of timbre

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