The detection of differences in the cues to distance by elderly hearing-impaired listeners.

This experiment measured the capability of hearing-impaired individuals to discriminate differences in the cues to the distance of spoken sentences. The stimuli were generated synthetically, using a room-image procedure to calculate the direct sound and first 74 reflections for a source placed in a 7 x 9 m room, and then presenting each of those sounds individually through a circular array of 24 loudspeakers. Seventy-seven listeners participated, aged 22-83 years and with hearing levels from -5 to 59 dB HL.