Prolonged forward masking makes vowels mask consonants in impaired ears

Evidence

The reduced release from forward masking has substantial implications for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. Even when target stimuli are presented in a quiet environment, components of the target stimulus that precede other components can drastically influence the ability to extract information present throughout the duration of the target. For example, within a speech signal, a high-intensity vowel could, in theory, forward-mask a low-intensity consonant, causing difficulty for the listener with hearing loss to identify that consonant. Slowing speech can also help with forward masking effects, but is not always easily achievable. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1111

Many listeners with hearing loss do not have large distortions to their ability to follow temporal changes in a sound, when measured using gap and modulation detection. However, deficits are profoundly evident with respect to forward masking and in temporal integration. The longer release of forward masking associated with SNHL has implications for the perception of both speech and music, in quiet and in noisy situations. Consider a highly fluctuating signal that contains information in the highand low-amplitude epochs. Within this fluctuating stimulus, the high-amplitude components may forward mask the low-amplitude ones. For a speech stimulus, then, we might observe high-energy vowels forward masking the low-energy consonants. Perceiving music might be affected in a similar manner. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1699

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an audiology explainer: why hearing-impaired listeners mishear soft consonants after loud vowels and what speech-rate changes actually do.
• XREF: Ties to the temporal-masking and gap-detection material from earlier chapters; glosses why vowels swamp consonants in impaired perception. — connects to: Only simultaneous masking arises in cochlear peripheral processing; Loud flanking syllables immediately preceding a soft target induce forward masking — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4045; Loss of peripheral compression alone impairs recognition of low-level syllables between louder ones (+8 more)
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1111; Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1699

Broader Connections

• Forward masking measures temporal processing between distinct sounds. #expands (0.82)
• Low-frequency transport noise masks the vowels that carry speech meaning #exemplifies (0.78)
• Sound masking extends in time before and after the masker #expands (0.75)