Interactive effects of high-pass filtering and masking noise on word recognition

This study sought to examine the word recognition performance in noise of individuals with a simulated low-frequency hearing loss. The goal was to understand how low-frequency hearing impairment affects performance on tasks that challenge temporal processing skills.

Twenty-two normal-hearing young adults participated. Monosyllabic words were presented in continuous and interrupted noise at 3 signal-to-noise ratios of -10, 0, and +10 dB. High-pass filtering of the stimuli at 3 different cutoff frequencies (ie, 1,000, 1,250, and 1,500 Hz) simulated the low-frequency hearing impairment.

In general, performance decreased with increasing cutoff frequency, was higher for more favorable signal-to-noise ratios, and was superior in the interrupted condition relative to the continuous noise condition. One important revelation was that the magnitude of the performance superiority observed in the interrupted noise condition did not diminish with high-pass filtering; ie, the release from masking in interrupted noise was preserved.

The results of the present study complement previous findings in which this paradigm was used with low-pass filtering to simulate a high-frequency hearing loss. That is to say, low-frequency hearing channels are inherently poorer than high-frequency channels in temporal resolution.