Impaired word recognition in noise by patients with noise-induced cochlear hearing loss: contribution of temporal resolution defect
Phillips, D.P.; Rappaport, J.M.; Gulliver, J.M.
American Journal of Otology 15(5): 679-686
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0192-9763 PMID: 8572072 Document Number: 427419
Fifteen patients with mild noise-induced cochlear hearing loss reported a selective difficulty in understanding speech in noisy settings. To examine the hypothesis that a temporal resolution defect was responsible for this difficulty, the patients were tested for their recognition of monosyllabic words presented against continuous and interrupted wide-band noise backgrounds, at each of seven signal-to-noise ratios. Their recognition performance was compared with that of normal listeners studied with the same paradigms. By comparison with the controls, the group with cochlear hearing loss showed a significant recognition impairment only for words presented against the interrupted masker. This finding was in keeping with the existence of a temporal resolution defect in cochlear disease, though it need not indicate a stimulus timing defect at the level of individual cochlear neurons.