Duration discrimination in listeners with cochlear hearing loss: effects of stimulus type and frequency.
This study examined the effects of cochlear hearing loss on the ability to discriminate increments in the duration of a stimulus under conditions where the frequency and/or amplitude of the stimulus change dynamically. Three stimulus types were used: pure tones, frequency-modulated tones, and narrow bands of noise. The carrier/center frequency of each 250-ms stimulus either remained constant at 1035 Hz or varied randomly from presentation to presentation across the frequency range 432-2804 Hz. Two groups of listeners participated: 9 with bilateral cochlear hearing loss and 7 with normal hearing sensitivity. The results showed no differences in performance between the 2 groups. However, both groups showed poorer duration discrimination for the conditions where the carrier/center frequency changed randomly than for the conditions where the carrier/center frequency remained constant. In addition, performance was poorer for the narrowband noise stimuli than for the tonal stimuli. This pattern of results suggests that across-frequency temporal judgments are more difficult than isofrequency temporal judgments, but that cochlear hearing loss does not exacerbate this difficulty per se.
Grose
John H
JH
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7070, USA. jhg@med.unc.edu
Hall
Joseph W
JW
Buss
Emily
E
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*