School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Central Florida, 4364 Scorpius Street, HSII, Suite 101, Orlando, Florida 32816-2215, USA.
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 1215 21st Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee 37232, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2024 Oct 1;156(4):2434-2447. doi: 10.1121/10.0030471.
Spectral weighting functions for sound localization were measured in participants with bilateral mild sloping to moderately severe, high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and compared to normal hearing (NH) participants with and without simulated SNHL. Each participant group localized three types of complex tones, comprised of seven frequency components spatially jittered and presented from the horizontal frontal field. A threshold-elevating noise masker was implemented in the free field to simulate SNHL for participants with NH. On average, participants with SNHL and NH (in quiet and simulated SNHL) placed the greatest perceptual weight on components within the interaural time difference "dominance region," found previously to peak around 800 Hz [Folkerts and Stecker, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 151, 3409-3425 (2022)]. In addition to the peak at 800 Hz, both participant groups (including NH participants in quiet) placed near equal weight on 400 Hz, resulting in a broadened "peak" in the dominance region, most likely due to the reduction of audibility to higher frequency components. However, individual weighting strategies were more variable across participants with SNHL than participants with NH. Localization performance was reduced for participants with SNHL but not for NH participants with simulated hearing loss when compared to NH participants in quiet.
用于声音定位的频谱加权函数在双侧轻度至中度严重、高频感音神经性听力损失（SNHL）的参与者中进行了测量，并与具有和不具有模拟 SNHL 的正常听力（NH）参与者进行了比较。每个参与者组定位了三种由七个频率分量组成的复合音，这些频率分量在空间上抖动并从前额水平方向呈现。在自由场中实施了一个阈值提升噪声掩蔽器，以模拟 NH 参与者的 SNHL。平均而言，SNHL 参与者和 NH 参与者（在安静和模拟 SNHL 中）对位于双耳时间差“主导区域”内的分量赋予最大的感知权重，该区域先前发现峰值在 800 Hz 左右[Folkerts 和 Stecker，J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 151, 3409-3425（2022）]。除了 800 Hz 的峰值外，两组参与者（包括安静时的 NH 参与者）都在 400 Hz 附近赋予了几乎相等的权重，导致主导区域的“峰值”变宽，这很可能是由于高频分量的可听度降低所致。然而，与 NH 参与者相比，SNHL 参与者的个体加权策略更为多变。与安静时的 NH 参与者相比，SNHL 参与者的定位性能下降，但具有模拟听力损失的 NH 参与者则没有。
