Cochlear damage increases susceptibility to masking, hurting speech in noise.

Evidence

Listeners with sensorineural hearing loss have a common complaint of having great difficulty communicating in noisy environments. This complaint can be partially traced to a greater susceptibility of masking that results from cochlear damage. Deficits in detecting masked sounds have been measured repeatedly in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 555

Listeners with sensorineural hearing loss have a common complaint of having great difficulty communicating in noisy environments. This complaint can be partially traced to a greater susceptibility of masking that results from cochlear damage. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 555

Categorization

• XREF: This causal claim is the central problem that amplifies the reader’s whole purpose across the book, contrasting normal dip-listening with impaired cochleae. — connects to: Hearing damage widens acoustic filter bandwidth, impairing speech separation and sensitivity — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 674
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 555