Glimpses can fall below audibility threshold for hearing-impaired listeners

Evidence

A somewhat controversial idea is related to the loudness of sounds at and near threshold for listeners with SNHL. These measurements can be difficult to make, but work by Buus and Florentine (2002) suggests that the loudness of sounds at and near threshold may be higher for listeners with SNHL than for those with normal hearing. Essentially, listeners with SNHL appear to perceive sounds near their threshold as being louder than listeners with normal-hearing. Buus and Florentine have named this particular phenomenon softness imperception. This phenomenon occurs in conjunction with the abnormally rapid growth of loudness observed for levels between 10 dB SL and about 80 dB SPL. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 845 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Recording studio background noise should approach the hearing threshold — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 942; Hearing-impaired deficits persist even when only energetic glimpses are presented; Near-threshold sounds may sound louder to impaired than to normal ears — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 845 (+4 more)

Related

• Near-threshold sounds may sound louder to impaired than to normal ears (similarity 0.93)
• Threshold is a statistical artifact, not a sharp boundary of audibility (similarity 0.87)
• Hearing thresholds add almost no predictive power beyond age and encoding measures (similarity 0.86)
• Soft sounds give the ear inadequate access to rapid amplitude changes in speech (similarity 0.84)
• Hearing loss squeezes the full loudness range into a much smaller dynamic range (similarity 0.84)
• Small amounts of hearing loss disproportionately impair speech-in-noise perception (similarity 0.83)
• Hearing-impaired deficits persist even when only energetic glimpses are presented (similarity 0.83)
• Echo-fusion thresholds vary widely among hearing-impaired listeners regardless of audiometric thresholds. (similarity 0.83)
• Hearing-impaired listeners need a 15 dB UCL-to-threshold gap for audible amplified stimuli (similarity 0.82)
• Hearing-impaired listeners need higher signal-to-noise ratios than normal hearers do (similarity 0.82)
• Audibility deficits must be corrected before supra-threshold factors can be studied. (similarity 0.81)
• The audiogram cannot predict which hearing-impaired listeners have temporal processing deficits (similarity 0.81)
• Hearing-impaired listeners rely on spectral not level cues at threshold (similarity 0.81)
• A sound’s softness is only meaningful relative to who can hear it (similarity 0.81)
• Noise-impaired listeners show reduced temporal integration, only 4 dB per decade (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Near-threshold sounds may sound louder to impaired than to normal ears #corroborates (0.90) — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 845
• Threshold is a statistical artifact, not a sharp boundary of audibility #expands (0.85)