Perceptual Distortions in Aided Hearing-Impaired Listeners: Psychophysical Evidence of Excessive Loudness Growth and Altered Timbre Representation.
Armand Schwarz, Paul Avan, Patrick Susini and 1 others
PMID 42664058WHAT IT FOUND
Aided hearing-impaired listeners hear sounds as getting louder faster and as more different from each other than normal-hearing listeners do, especially for bright and sharp-onset sounds.
A simulated hearing aid did not fully correct these perceptual distortions.
Key findings
01The hearing-impaired group showed significantly steeper loudness growth than all three comparison groups, and brightness had a significant effect on loudness growth only in the two hearing-impaired groups (steeper in the real hearing-impaired group, less steep in the simulated group).
02The temporal unfolding of sounds (how the energy envelope spreads over time) was perceived as a distinct quality by both hearing-impaired groups but was effectively ignored by both normal-hearing groups.
03Real hearing-impaired listeners showed heightened sensitivity to small changes in roughness at low modulation depths, a distortion that the hearing loss simulator failed to reproduce.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The hearing-impaired group had only 8 participants, limiting generalisability. All groups used a hearing aid simulator with a single DSL v5.0 fitting, not the varied devices patients actually wear. The hearing loss simulator failed to reproduce the loudness growth and roughness distortion seen in the real hearing-impaired group, so it likely misses important aspects of cochlear impairment. All stimuli were synthetic harmonic tones, not the natural environmental sounds patients complain about. No acclimatization period was given for the simulated hearing aid. Only one moderate hearing loss profile was tested; steeper or asymmetric losses were not included.
Declared interests
Funded by Fondation Pour l'Audition and two French government grants (ANR). The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these results as evidence that current hearing aids cause perceptual distortion in everyday listening. The study used a single simulated hearing aid with one fitting prescription and synthetic tones, not the varied devices and natural sounds patients actually encounter. The simulator also failed to reproduce the roughness distortion seen in real hearing-impaired listeners, so it likely misses important aspects of how cochlear impairment affects perception.