Raising speech level reduces the advantage from masker fluctuation absence

Evidence

Only three speech-to-masker ratios (‑5, 0, and 5 dB) were tested in this part of the experiment. The relevant data from the HI listeners are simply replotted from Fig. 3 . Performance was generally worse overall for both the young and age-matched NH listeners, compared to results at the lower sound level. In addition, the difference between the PT and MT conditions was reduced. This reduction was observed even in the non-vocoded conditions, but was particularly apparent in the vocoded conditions. In fact, in the vocoded conditions, the differences between the NH groups and the HI group were relatively small. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2194

The loss of outer hair cells that causes recruitment also alters the representation of fluctuating sounds and can lead to greater effects of masking by fluctuating maskers. Here, the enhanced representation of those fluctuations compared with normal-hearing counterparts might increase the amount of simultaneous and forward masking (Bacon, Opie, & Montoya, 1998). As a result, recruitment can negatively influence the fluctuating masker benefit. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1694

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains what ‘fluctuating masker benefit’ means and why recruitment erodes it.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2194; Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1694