Comparing normal and recruiting-impaired listeners would reveal where loudness is decoded

Evidence

The largely linear relationship between categorical loudness and sound intensity over the range of presented levels, as well as the fact that our participants were from a rather homogenous group of normal hearing listeners with similar loudness perception, might have limited the ability to differentiate between the contributions of both measures to neural activation in the human auditory system. A promising next step would be the inclusion of hearing impaired participants characterized by an altered relationship between sound intensity and perceived loudness (e.g., loudness recruitment). Moreover, this approach could provide additional valuable information about the nature of hearing disorders associated with distorted loudness perceptions. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2610

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle on how pathological ‘natural experiments’ (recruitment) dissect normal perceptual mechanisms.