Preliminary Measurements of Binaural Masking-Level Difference When Using Hearing Aids for Sensorineural Hearing Loss

The Binaural Masking-Level Difference phenomenon occurs both in listeners with normal hearing and with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Previous studies of BMLDs involving SNHL listeners used a 500- or 2000-Hz pure tone as the target signal, but the BMLD performance of SNHL listeners with stimulus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of medical and biological engineering 2016-10, Vol.36 (5), p.668-674
Main Authors: Ho, Cheng-Yu, Li, Pei-Chun, Young, Shuenn-Tsong, Yeh, Wen-Ying, Wang, Chih-Hung, Chu, Woei-Chyn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aids
Amplification
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Cell Biology
Engineering
Hearing aids
Hearing loss
Imaging
Masking
Original Article
Radiology
Target detection
Thresholds
White noise
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Summary:The Binaural Masking-Level Difference phenomenon occurs both in listeners with normal hearing and with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Previous studies of BMLDs involving SNHL listeners used a 500- or 2000-Hz pure tone as the target signal, but the BMLD performance of SNHL listeners with stimulus amplified for other frequencies has not been reported previously. Therefore, this study aimed to measure the BMLD in SNHL listeners at various frequencies after amplification by hearing aids. Thirty subjects with mild to moderately severe SNHL participated in the experiments. The BMLDs were measured based on the detection threshold differences for pure tones of 125, 250, 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz in the presence of white noise when presented interaurally in phase (S 0 N 0 ) and interaurally in antiphase (S π N 0 ). The results show that when using white noise as a masker, the average detection thresholds for the target signals were significantly lower in the S π N 0 condition compared to those in the S 0 N 0 condition ( p  
ISSN:1609-0985
2199-4757
DOI:10.1007/s40846-016-0174-4