Discrimination of Frequency Ramps in Subjects with Cochlear Hearing Loss

Abstract

The auditory sensitivity for detecting linear frequency sweeps of a continuous pure tone has been studied in ten young subjects with cochlear hearing loss. The mean thresholds were elevated by a factor of 2.8 as compared with a normal group over the whole range of ramp durations studied (10-500 msec). The results show that this elevation is most likely caused mainly by the cochlear lesion per se, other possible factors having only a minor effect. No clear correlations could be found between thresholds for frequency change and results of other pure tone audiometric tests. Such tests thus cannot predict a subject's frequency discrimination. Acfa Ololaryngol83

Frequency Discrimination Ability and Stop-Consonant Identification in Normally Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Subjects

“…For steady-state pure-tone stimuli, the difference limen (DL) for frequency is elevated in some hearing-impaired listeners (Butler & Albrite, 1957;DiCarlo, 1962;Freyman & Nelson, 1987;Gengel, 1973;Hall & Wood, 1984;Ross, Huntington, Newby, & Dixon, 1965;Turner & Nelson, 1982). More importantly, this is also the case for stimuli that have frequency transitions similar to those encountered in speech (Arlinger, Jerlvall, Ahren, & Holmgren, 1977;Collins, 1984;Danaher, Osberger, & Pickett, 1973;Danaher & Pickett, 1975;Grant, 1987;Martin, Pickett, & Colten, 1972;Pickett & Martony, 1970;Tyler, Wood, & Fernandes, 1983;Van Tasell, 1980;Zurek & Formby, 1981). The ability to discriminate frequency changes may affect which aspects of stop-consonant onset are used by the listener.…”

The perception of frequency peaks and troughs in wide frequency modulationsa)

“…Few experiments have been done on the discriminability of frequency glides with supraliminai slopes, but much work has been devoted to the mere detection of FM for linear frequency glides (Sergeant and Harris, 1962;Pollack, 1968;Gardner and Wilson, 1979;Tyler eta!., 1983;Schouten, 1985Schouten, , 1986Dooley and Moore, 1988b) or related stimuli (Nfib•iek and Hirsh, 1969;Tsumura et al, 1973;Arlinger et al, 1977aArlinger et al, , 1977bCarlyon and Stubbs, 1989). In some of these studies (Tsumura etal., 1973;Dooley and Moore, 1988b), lower thresholds were found for falling glides than for rising glides, which seems consistent with the discrimination data discussed above (Porter et al, 1991).…”