People with longstanding unilateral hearing loss shifted their cue weighting toward high-frequency components for speech perception particularly in reverberant environments

We revealed that people with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) experience degraded speech intelligibility in reverberant environments. Although some studies have suggested that their hearing may be improved through adaptive reliance on certain monaural cues, the mechanisms by which individuals with UHL adapt to reverberant environments remain unclear. In the current study, speech reception thresholds (SRTs) and spatial release from masking (SRM) values were measured using stimuli filtered into different frequency bands to explore these underlying mechanisms. SRTs and SRM values were compared across broadband, low-frequency, and high-frequency conditions, generated using different channel sets of a gammatone filter bank. Reverberation significantly degraded speech intelligibility in the low-frequency condition. In the broadband condition, which included low-frequency components, participants with longstanding UHL showed better speech intelligibility compared to participants who simulated the listening situation immediately after the onset of UHL. Additionally, in this comparison, participants with UHL showed a smaller negative SRM value in the high-frequencycondition when the target was located on the impaired ear side. These results suggest that individuals with longstanding UHL may shift their cue weighting toward high-frequency components for speech perception particularly in reverberant environments. [Work supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant No. 24K23899.]