Head shadow makes high-frequency binaural cues inaudible in sloping hearing loss

Evidence

One important factor is the consideration of audibility. Even if listeners with hearing loss have symmetrical hearing impairment, or a slight asymmetry between the ears, acoustic effects can render certain components of sound inaudible. Head shadow effects are of particular concern, due to their importance at high frequencies and the common high-frequency sloping hearing loss configuration. Listeners with hearing loss are compromised in their abilities to use binaural intensity-based cues simply from the interaction between the acoustic environment and the hearing loss. Surely a listener cannot access a cue that he cannot hear. Thus, psychoacousticians must take great care when designing experiments to parse out the contributions of audibility and true binaural abilities. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1576

Categorization

• XREF: Interfaces with the reader’s broader goal of separating audibility confounds from genuine binaural processing deficits in hearing-impaired listeners.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1576