Impaired word recognition in noise by patients with noise-induced cochlear hearing loss: contribution of temporal resolution defect.
Fifteen patients with mild noise-induced cochlear hearing loss reported a selective difficulty in understanding speech in noisy settings. To examine the hypothesis that a temporal resolution defect was responsible for this difficulty, the patients were tested for their recognition of monosyllabic words presented against continuous and interrupted wide-band noise backgrounds, at each of seven signal-to-noise ratios. Their recognition performance was compared with that of normal listeners studied with the same paradigms. By comparison with the controls, the group with cochlear hearing loss showed a significant recognition impairment only for words presented against the interrupted masker. This finding was in keeping with the existence of a temporal resolution defect in cochlear disease, though it need not indicate a stimulus timing defect at the level of individual cochlear neurons.
Phillips
D P
DP
Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
Rappaport
J M
JM
Gulliver
J M
JM
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015834:Cochlear Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test