Small amounts of hearing loss disproportionately impair speech-in-noise perception

Evidence

A puzzle regarding the effects of SNHL is that relatively small amounts of loss have a surprisingly large impact on listeners, especially in noisy acoustic environments. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5472

An obvious correlate of elevated auditory thresholds (poor audibility) is an inability to hear low-level sounds in the environment. Poor audibility can impact the ability to have a conversation, particularly if the conversation is relatively quiet. In these cases, a listener will miss the low-level elements of speech, commonly unvoiced fricatives, but other speech sounds may be rendered inaudible by hearing loss as well. For listeners who do not have flat losses, differences in the threshold across the frequency range of hearing can also cause deficits in perception, particularly for speech cues that require an across-frequency representation. A listener with a sloping, highfrequency hearing loss cannot take advantage of acoustic information in the high-frequency range. If certain formants in speech are rendered inaudible, a listener may confuse speech sounds that contain similar low-frequency formants. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1688

Categorization

• XREF: Connects with the book’s own auditory scene analysis material; also links to audiogram interpretation in clinical audiology. — connects to: Inner-ear damage permanently corrupts higher-level auditory perception, not just thresholds — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1879; TFS sensitivity predicts speech-in-noise ability among normally hearing adults — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4157; Hidden hearing loss can impair speech in noise without raising thresholds (+5 more)
• corroborated: 6 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5472; Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1688

Broader Connections

• Hidden hearing loss can impair speech in noise without raising thresholds #expands (0.90)
• Speech-like noise fools the brain and harms intelligibility more than its level suggests #corroborates (0.80) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2481