Identification and discrimination of VOT by listeners with moderate, severe and profound sensorineurai hearing loss

Abstract

To determine whether sensorineural hearing loss affects listeners' ability to detect the voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonants, listeners with moderate, severe, and profound hearing loss were presented stimuli from along a VOT continuum in both identification and discrimination tasks. The location of the phoneme boundary did not differ among the normal listeners, the listeners with moderate loss, and most listeners with severe loss. Some listeners with severe loss, however, evidenced longer boundaries while others could not identify the signals at all. A similar outcome was obtained for the listeners with profound loss. For the most part discrimination data mirrored identification data. However, in several instances listeners who were unable to identify voiced and voiceless stops were able to discriminate between them in a normal manner. Since identification and discrimination tasks assess different aspects of information processing, an evaluation of sensory capabilities in the hearing impaired should include both tasks.