The effect of competing melodies on melody recognition by hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners

For a group of 30 hearing-impaired subjects and a matched group of 15 normal-hearing subjects (age range 13-17) the following data were collected: the tone audiogram, the auditory bandwidth at 1000 Hz, and the recognition threshold of a short melody presented simultaneously with two other melodies, lower and higher in frequency, respectively. The threshold was defined as the frequency distance required to recognize the test melody. It was found that, whereas the mean recognition threshold for the normal-hearing subjects was five semitones, it was, on the average, 27 semitones for the hearing-impaired subjects. Although the interindividual spread for the latter group was large, it did not correlate with the subjects' auditory bandwidth, nor with their musical experience or education.