Mild and severe hearing losses produce opposite loudness growth patterns

Evidence

To summarize, listeners with mildmoderate hearing losses typically experience loudness recruitment, in which the loudness of sounds tends to grow more rapidly than for listeners with normal hearing. Yet, sensorineural hearing loss is not typically associated with abnormal loudness discomfort levels. On the other hand, listeners with severe-to-profound losses can experience underrecruitment and may perceive all sounds as being relatively soft compared with the perception of listeners with normal hearing and mild-moderate losses. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 856

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Directly extends the loudness recruitment mechanism introduced earlier in this chapter; also feeds audiology fitting decisions discussed in later chapters.

Related

• Mild-moderate losses show recruitment while severe-profound losses show underrecruitment (similarity 0.93)
• Sensorineural hearing loss produces rapid loudness growth while discomfort thresholds stay normal (similarity 0.88)
• Sensorineural hearing loss causes abnormal rapid loudness growth called recruitment (similarity 0.87)
• Loudness-growth slope increases with hearing-loss degree but resists exact prediction (similarity 0.87)
• The full loudness range squeezes into a smaller dynamic range for impaired listeners. (similarity 0.86)
• Sensorineural hearing loss compresses the full loudness range into fewer decibels (similarity 0.85)
• Hearing loss squeezes the full loudness range into a much smaller dynamic range (similarity 0.84)
• Hearing-impaired listeners show faster loudness growth but similar discomfort thresholds (similarity 0.84)
• Loudness recruitment shrinks dynamic range while preserving overall loudness (similarity 0.83)
• Mild hearing loss makes trained listeners give inconsistent sound quality judgments (similarity 0.83)
• Comparing normal and recruiting-impaired listeners would reveal where loudness is decoded (similarity 0.83)
• Recruitment can explain why loudness summation is absent in noise-induced hearing loss (similarity 0.82)
• Understanding loudness’s neural basis could improve recruitment treatment (similarity 0.82)
• Loudness recruitment in impaired listeners could reveal how cortex encodes perceived level (similarity 0.82)
• Adjustment methods bias moderate sounds toward louder settings for good audibility. (similarity 0.81)