Detection of frequency modulation by hearing-impaired listeners: effects of carrier frequency, modulation rate, and...

It has been proposed that the detection of frequency modulation (FM) of sinusoidal carriers can be mediated by two mechanisms: a place mechanism based on FM-induced amplitude modulation (AM) in the excitation pattern, and a temporal mechanism based on phase-locking in the auditory nerve. The temporal mechanism appears to be "sluggish" and does not play a role for FM rates above about 10 Hz. It also does not play a role for high carrier frequencies (above about 5 kHz). This experiment examined FM detection in three young subjects with normal hearing and four elderly subjects with cochlear hearing loss. Carrier frequencies were 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 6 kHz and modulation rates were 2, 5, 10, and 20 Hz. FM detection thresholds were measured both in the absence of AM, and with AM of a fixed depth (m = 0.33) added in both intervals of a forced-choice trial. The added AM was intended to disrupt cues based on FM-induced AM in the excitation pattern. Generally, the hearing-impaired subjects performed markedly more poorly than the normal-hearing subjects. For the normal-hearing subjects, the disruptive effect of the AM tended to increase with increasing modulation rate, for carrier frequencies below 6 kHz, as found previously by Moore and Sek [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 2320-2331 (1996)]. For the hearing-impaired subjects, the disruptive effective of the AM was generally larger than for the normal-hearing subjects, and the magnitude of the disruption did not consistently increase with increasing modulation rate. The results suggest that cochlear hearing impairment adversely affects both temporal and excitation pattern mechanisms of FM detection.