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British Medical Bulletin 43:887-908 (1987)
© 1987 The British Council

research-article

Psychophysics of normal and impaired hearing

Brian C J Moore

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge Cambridge

Abstract

A central theme in the perception of sound by normally hearing and hearing-impaired listeners is the frequency- analysing capacity of the auditory system. This capacity plays a role in our ability to detect signals in masking noise, to identify the timbre of speech and musical sounds, and to perceive the pitch of complex tones. The basic properties of these abilities can be understood by conceiving of the peripheral auditory system as containing a bank of bandpass filters (the auditory filters), whose centre frequencies cover the whole audible range. The filters at different centre frequencies are characterised by the value of the auditory filter bandwidth or critical bandwidth (CB). The basic frequency-analysing mechanisms seem to be well established at the level of the cochlear nerve. Information about stimulus frequency, intensity, and spectrum may be carried both in the distribution of activity across nerve fibres and in the temporal patterns of neural firing. Temporal patterns may be particularly important in the perception of pitch. Damage to the inner ear results in an impairment in the frequency-analysing mechanisms. Thus the ability to detect and discriminate signals in noise, to identify the timbre of sounds, and to perceive the pitch of complex sounds, may all be impaired. Temporal resolution and sound localisation ability may also be reduced in cases of cochlear hearing loss, and loudness perception may be abnormal. These disabilities are not corrected with a conventional hearing aid.


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