Identification of synthetic /bdg/ by hearing impaired listeners in monotic and dichotic listening conditions

Abstract

Individuals with sensorineural hearing losses of both flat and sloping configuration evidence difficulty in speech understanding. To assess whether upward spread of masking of F1 is responsible for the poor identification of stop consonant place of articulation, we presented to hearing impaired listeners stimuli from along a [ba da ga] continuum in both monotic and dichotic (F1 to one ear; F2/F3 to the other ear) listening conditions. In the monotic conditions, hearing impaired listeners with similar audiograms evidenced great variability in labeling performance. In the dichotic conditions. performance did not generally improve although for a few listeners the improvement was striking. We suspect that upward spread of masking is not generally responsible for the poor identification of place in listeners with moderate, flat, and sloping sensorineural hearing losses.