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Abstract:
The purpose of this paper was to ascertain and compare the binaural pitch-matching abilities of hearing and hearing-impaired people. Three groups of subjects, all adults ranging in age from 21 to 37 years, took part in this investigation. Group A consisted of 18 normal hearing people, Group B consisted of seven people with conductive hearing impairment and Group C consisted of nine people with sensorineural hearing impairment. Their mean binaural pitch-matching errors obtained at each one of the main speech frequencies (250-4000 Hz) were as follows: For the normal hearing group the mean pitch-matching errors varied from 1.57% at 2000 Hz to 2.31% at 4000 Hz. The corresponding values for the conductive group varied from 2.33% at 2000 Hz to 3.28% at 500 Hz. The sensorineural group exhibited mean binaural pitch-matching errors varying from 6.93% at 250 Hz to 14.62% at 1000 Hz. All mean error differences obtained between the sensorineural group and the other two groups of subjects were statistically significant at the 0.01 level. The differences between the normal hearing group and the conductive group did not prove to be statistically significant at the 0.01 level. The differences between the normal hearing group and the conductive group did not prove to be statistically significant.