Temporal processing abilities of hearing‐impaired listeners

Abstract

It has been suggested that deficits in speech processing associated with hearing impairment may result in part from deficits in basic temporal processing abilities. Performance of 16 sensorineural hearing‐impaired listeners, whose mean heating loss ranged from 25–95 dB, was studied with a battery of discrimination tasks [Watson et al., 1. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 71, S73 (1982)]. The tasks included discrimination of: (a) duration of a 1.0‐kHz tone; (b) temporal jitter within a train of square pulses; (c) temporal order of two sinusoidal frequencies; (d) temporal order within sequences of syllables; (e) detection of a variable duration test tone, embedded in a nine‐tone sequence; and (f) frequency and intensity of 1.0‐kHz tone. Stimuli were presented over headphones, with 6 dB/oct frequency pre‐emphasis, or in the field while the subjects wore their hearing aids. The sensation level was in all cases held constant at 25–30 dB. Although there were notable individual differences, the average performance in t...