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Perceptual Calibration

This work capitalizes on recent findings with normal-hearing listeners that reveal general auditory processes (e.g., suppression and adaptation) that serve to enhance spectral contrast across successive speech segments. Auditory processes that enhance contrast (differences) do so in part by diminishing perception of reliable aspects of the signal that stay the same. Understanding the time course of this ‘perceptual calibration’ in hearing-impaired listeners is important in light of multichannel compression in hearing aids, which effectively limits the reliability of information in the long-term spectrum. Ultimately, this work will not only provide insight into the relative importance of spectrally local and global contrasts in hearing-impaired listeners’ perception of coarticulated speech, but will also serve as a springboard for future research which will inform decisions about programming hearing aids that utilize dynamic filtering.