Diplacusis affects normal-hearing listeners too, at 1-2% pitch discrepancy
Evidence
Pitch perception in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss is often poorer than for listeners with normal hearing, but as with other auditory phenomena, considerable variability exists across listeners. Because hearing loss influences the perception of pitch, it can lead to diplacusis, or the perception of hearing the same tone at a different pitch in each ear. Another way to think of diplacusis is that a single tone is heard as two tones with different pitches, one in each ear. Diplacusis can be measured by asking a listener to adjust the frequency of a tone in one ear so that its pitch matches a tone in the other ear. Normalhearing listeners have also been demonstrated to have diplacusis, with pitch discrepancies of about 1% to 2% across the ears (e.g., Albers & Wilson, 1968). Yet, the magnitude and prevalence of diplacusis is higher in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. Diplacusis can be quite pronounced in listeners with asymmetrical and severe-to-profound hearing losses. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1327
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- DEFINE: Defines diplacusis and its measurement method clearly.
Related
- Sensorineural hearing loss worsens diplacusis, which even normal hearers have mildly (similarity 0.96)
- Hearing the same tone at a different pitch in each ear is called diplacusis (similarity 0.93)
- Hearing loss disrupts pitch perception through multiple independent coding failures (similarity 0.89)
- Hearing loss disrupts pitch via place, temporal, and interaural mechanisms. (similarity 0.81)
- Pitch perception differs across listeners despite normal hearing thresholds (similarity 0.81)
- Hearing-impaired listeners usually hear the correct pitch but with more variability (similarity 0.80)