Recruitment-induced loudness discomfort in aided listeners is a level artifact, not hypersensitivity
Evidence
By raising the level of the voice, however, the listener may now have a perception that the speech is too loud. Recall that this phenomenon does not occur because a typical listener with SNHL experiences abnormally loud sounds, but because the speech is now at a higher level and therefore a higher loudness. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1691
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Echoes the earlier recruitment material and the general theme that hearing-impaired loudness is about altered dynamic range, not absolute sensitivity.
Related
- Loudness recruitment makes raised speech feel too loud even without abnormal sound perception (similarity 0.88)
- In hearing-impaired regions loudness grows far faster with level (similarity 0.88)
- The full loudness range squeezes into a smaller dynamic range for impaired listeners. (similarity 0.87)
- Loudness recruitment shrinks dynamic range while preserving overall loudness (similarity 0.86)
- Whether loudness recruitment degrades speech perception remains unsettled (similarity 0.85)
- Loudness recruitment in impaired listeners could reveal how cortex encodes perceived level (similarity 0.84)
- Hearing-impaired specific loudness jumps to near-normal values 20 dB above threshold (similarity 0.84)
- Hearing-impaired listeners show faster loudness growth but similar discomfort thresholds (similarity 0.84)
- Testing hearing-impaired listeners could reveal how loudness distortion maps to brain activity (similarity 0.84)
- Comparing normal and recruiting-impaired listeners would reveal where loudness is decoded (similarity 0.83)
- Sensorineural hearing loss produces rapid loudness growth while discomfort thresholds stay normal (similarity 0.83)
- Hearing-impaired listeners need higher signal-to-noise ratios than normal hearers do (similarity 0.83)
- Sensorineural hearing loss causes abnormal rapid loudness growth called recruitment (similarity 0.83)
- Simulated loudness recruitment harms speech intelligibility but hearing-aid compensation does not restore it (similarity 0.83)
- Pure level changes are rated as valuable as SNR changes despite not aiding intelligibility (similarity 0.82)