title: The effect of hearing loss on source-distance dependent speech intelligibility in rooms.
abstract: Westermann and Buchholz [(2015). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 137(2), 757-767] found substantial improvements in speech reception thresholds (SRTs) for normal hearing listeners in a reverberant auditorium when the target talker was separated in distance from a two-talker masker. This study applied similar methodology, but tested listeners with a hearing impairment. On average, the participants received a 7 dB benefit in SRTs when the target was fixed at 0.5 m and the masker was moved from 0.5 to 10 m. But when the target was moved away, the SRTs increased by 5 dB. This indicates that hearing impaired listeners have difficulties suppressing nearby maskers while focusing attention on a far target.
authors.affiliation: National Acoustic Laboratories, Australian Hearing, 16 University Avenue, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australia adwe@widex.com, jorg.buchholz@nal.gov.au.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Westermann
authors.affiliation: National Acoustic Laboratories, Australian Hearing, 16 University Avenue, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australia adwe@widex.com, jorg.buchholz@nal.gov.au.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Buchholz