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Discrimination of amplitude-modulation depth by subjects with normal and impaired hearing

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Schlittenlacher, J 
Moore, BCJ 

Abstract

The loudness recruitment associated with cochlear hearing loss increases the perceived amount of amplitude modulation (AM), called "fluctuation strength." For normal-hearing (NH) subjects, fluctuation strength "saturates" when the AM depth is high. If such saturation occurs for hearing-impaired (HI) subjects, they may show poorer AM depth discrimination than NH subjects when the reference AM depth is high. To test this hypothesis, AM depth discrimination of a 4-kHz sinusoidal carrier, modulated at a rate of 4 or 16 Hz, was measured in a two-alternative forced-choice task for reference modulation depths, mref, of 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7. AM detection was assessed using mref= 0. Ten older HI subjects, and five young and five older NH subjects were tested. Psychometric functions were measured using five target modulation depths for each mref. For AM depth discrimination, the HI subjects performed more poorly than the NH subjects, both at 30 dB sensation level (SL) and 75 dB sound pressure level (SPL). However, for AM detection, the HI subjects performed better than the NH subjects at 30 dB SL; there was no significant difference between the HI and NH groups at 75 dB SPL. The results for the NH subjects were not affected by age.

Description

Keywords

sound pressure, hearing, loudness, deafness, auditory system

Journal Title

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0001-4966
1520-8524

Volume Title

140

Publisher

American Institute of Physics
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M026957/1)
This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK, Grant No. RG78536).