Hearing-impaired listeners vary widely in binaural deficit severity

Evidence

As a rule, listeners with sensorineural hearing loss experience deficits in their sound localization and lateralization abilities (Akeroyd, 2014). A particular hallmark of these studies is wide variability of performance by listeners with hearing loss. As an example from a comprehensive study that evaluated MAAs in the free field and JNDs for ITDs and ILDs over headphones, Häusler, Colburn, and Marr (1983) measured binaural abilities in 140 listeners using broadband noise stimuli. Regarding the MAA measurements, some listeners with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss had MAAs within the range of normal variability, but other listeners, both those with bilateral hearing loss and those with asymmetrical hearing losses, had abnormally large MAAs. Most of the listeners with bilaterally symmetric hearing losses presented JNDs for ITDs and ILDs within normal limits, although some demonstrated larger ITDs than normal. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1578

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s goal of mapping normal-vs-impaired hearing differences — establishes that symmetric loss often preserves ITD/ILD discrimination.

Related

• Sensorineural hearing loss causes wide variability in sound localization ability (similarity 0.91)
• Sensorineural hearing loss impairs binaural cue use more than basic audibility (similarity 0.89)
• Hearing-impaired listeners gain far less binaural-squelch advantage than normal hearers (similarity 0.88)
• Even small hearing asymmetries across ears disrupt binaural hearing. (similarity 0.87)
• Hearing-impaired listeners in these tests had moderate symmetric sloping losses (similarity 0.86)
• Sensorineural hearing loss disrupts some temporal abilities but not others, with wide individual variability (similarity 0.86)
• Hearing-impaired listeners benefit roughly two-thirds less from binaural squelch than normal-hearing listeners. (similarity 0.86)
• Low sensation level impairs ITD and ILD discrimination even in normal listeners (similarity 0.86)
• Amplification cannot restore sound localization impaired by binaural encoding loss. (similarity 0.85)
• Hearing-impaired listeners gain far less from noise gaps than normal listeners (similarity 0.84)
• Spatial release from masking deficits often reduce to an audibility problem (similarity 0.84)
• Independent compression in each ear distorts binaural localization cues (similarity 0.84)
• Hearing-impaired listeners usually hear the correct pitch but with more variability (similarity 0.83)
• Mono mixed spatial-task evidence contradicts the assumption that hearing loss disrupts spatial processing globally (similarity 0.83)
• Binaural summation largely survives sensorineural hearing loss when sounds stay audible (similarity 0.83)