The Psychoacoustics of Profound Hearing Impairment

A group of profoundly hearing-impaired adults is being studied in order to determine their residual auditory capabilities. Most tests use acoustic contrasts that have relevance for the perception of speech, so that the results obtained may be used to guide the development of appropriate hearing aids. All the listeners are postlingually deafened, with losses >95 dB HL at and above 500 Hz, and least loss at low frequencies. Trends in detection thresholds, discomfort levels, dynamic ranges, intensity discrimination (both static and dynamic), frequency selectivity, spectral shape discrimination, gap detection, tone/noise discrimination, frequency discrimination and phase sensitivity are reported and discussed. Generally speaking, temporal resolving power seems to be more resistant to degradation than mechanisms of frequency selectivity. Furthermore, at least some of the differences in performance between normal and profoundly-impaired listeners may be attributable to the loss of frequency selectivity. Implications are drawn for hearing aid fitting and design, and comparisons made to the electro-auditory abilities of users of single-channel cochlear implants.