Review Article: Review of the Literature on Temporal Resolution in Listeners With Cochlear Hearing Impairment: A Critical Assessment of the Role of Suprathreshold Deficits

Abstract

A critical review of studies of temporal resolution in listeners with cochlear hearing impairment is presented with the aim of assessing evidence for suprathreshold deficits. Particular attention is paid to the roles of variables—such as stimulus audibility, overall stimulus level, and participant's age—which may complicate the interpretation of experimental findings in comparing the performance of hearing-impaired (HI) and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. On certain temporal tasks (e.g., gap detection), the performance of HI listeners appears to be degraded relative to that of NH listeners when compared at equal SPL (sound pressure level). For other temporal tasks (e.g., forward masking), HI performance is degraded relative to that of NH listeners when compared at equal sensation level. A relatively small group of studies exists, however, in which the effects of stimulus audibility and level (and occasionally participant's age) have been controlled through the use of noise-masked simulation of hearing loss in NH listeners. For some temporal tasks (including gap-detection, gap-duration discrimination, and detection of brief tones in modulated noise), the performance of HI listeners is well reproduced in the results of noise-masked NH listeners. For other tasks (i.e., temporal integration), noise-masked hearing-loss simulations do not reproduce the results of HI listeners. In three additional areas of temporal processing (duration discrimination, detection of temporal modulation in noise, and various temporal-masking paradigms), further studies employing control of stimulus audibility and level, as well as age, are necessary for a more complete understanding of the role of suprathreshold deficits in the temporal-processing abilities of HI listeners.