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. 2012 Mar;131(3):EL268-74.
doi: 10.1121/1.3687015.

Auditory externalization in hearing-impaired listeners: the effect of pinna cues and number of talkers

Alan W Boyd  1 , William M Whitmer, John J Soraghan, Michael A Akeroyd
Affiliations

Auditory externalization in hearing-impaired listeners: the effect of pinna cues and number of talkers

Alan W Boyd et al. J Acoust Soc Am. 2012 Mar.

Abstract

Hearing-aid wearers have reported sound source locations as being perceptually internalized (i.e., inside their head). The contribution of hearing-aid design to internalization has, however, received little attention. This experiment compared the sensitivity of hearing-impaired (HI) and normal-hearing listeners to externalization cues when listening with their own ears and simulated behind-the-ear hearing-aids in increasingly complex listening situations and reduced pinna cues. Participants rated the degree of externalization using a multiple-stimulus listening test for mixes of internalized and externalized speech stimuli presented over headphones. The results showed that HI listeners had a contracted perception of externalization correlated with high-frequency hearing loss.

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