Perception of Across-Frequency Asynchrony by Listeners with Cochlear Hearing Loss

Abstract

Cochlear hearing loss is often associated with broader tuning of the cochlear filters. Cochlear response latencies are dependent on the filter bandwidths, so hearing loss may affect the relationship between latencies across different characteristic frequencies. This prediction was tested by investigating the perception of synchrony between two tones exciting different regions of the cochlea in listeners with hearing loss. Subjective judgments of synchrony were compared with thresholds for asynchrony discrimination in a three-alternative forced-choice task. In contrast to earlier data from normal-hearing (NH) listeners, the synchronous-response functions obtained from the hearing-impaired (HI) listeners differed in patterns of symmetry and often had a very low peak (i.e., maximum proportion of "synchronous" responses). Also in contrast to data from NH listeners, the quantitative and qualitative correspondence between the data from the subjective and the forced-choice tasks was often poor. The results do not provide strong evidence for the influence of changes in cochlear mechanics on the perception of synchrony in HI listeners, and it remains possible that age, independent of hearing loss, plays an important role in temporal synchrony and asynchrony perception.