Temporal overshoot in simultaneous-masked psychophysical tuning curves from normal and hearing-impaired listeners

Simultaneous-masked psychophysical tuning curves (PTCs) were obtained from normal-hearing and sensorineural hearing-impaired listeners. The 20-ms signal was presented at the onset or at the temporal center of the 400-ms masker. For the normal-hearing listeners, as shown previously [S. P. Bacon and B. C. J. Moore, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 80, 1638-1645 (1986)], the PTCs were sharper on the high-frequency side for a signal in the temporal center of the masker. For the hearing-impaired listeners, however, the shape of the PTC was virtually independent of the temporal position of the signal. These data suggest that the mechanisms responsible for sharpening the PTC with time in normal-hearing listeners are ineffective in listeners with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss.