Hearing loss impairs pinna-cue discrimination for vertical sound localization

Evidence

The human pinna introduces spatial acoustic cues in terms of direction-dependent spectral patterns that shape the incoming sound. These cues are specifically useful for localization in the vertical dimension. Pinna cues exist at frequencies above approximately 5 kHz, a frequency range where people with hearing loss typically have their highest hearing thresholds. Since increased thresholds often are accompanied by reduced frequency resolution, there are good reasons to believe that many people with hearing loss are unable to discriminate these subtle spectral pinna-cue details, even if the relevant frequency region is amplified by hearing aids. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3049

Thus, the MAA will be determined with normally-sized (N), transposed (T) or Weinrich (W) pinna cues. The main research question was: Are the enhanced pinna cues (T or W) easier to discriminate than natural pinna cues (N) for hearing-impaired test subjects? Thus, is the MAA obtained with natural pinna cues (MAAN ) significantly larger than the MAA obtained with the two types of enhanced pinna cues (MAAT , MAAW )? — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3058

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines pinna cues as direction-dependent spectral patterns above ~5 kHz enabling vertical localization — a prerequisite concept for the whole study.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3049; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3058