Recent results have shown that auditory localization in the horizontal plane is dramatically worse for listeners wearing double hearing protection ~earplugs and earmuffs! than it is for listeners wearing single hearing protection ~earplugs or earmuffs alone!. This suggests that double hearing protection might also impair the spatial unmasking that normally occurs when two simultaneous talkers a...

The aims of the present study were to investigate the ability of hearing-impaired (HI) individuals with different binaural hearing conditions to discriminate spatial auditory-sources at the midline and lateral positions, and to explore the possible central processing mechanisms by measuring the minimal audible angle (MAA) and mismatch negativity (MMN) response. To measure MAA at the left/right ...

To study the spatial hearing abilities of bilateral hearing-aid users in multi-talker situations, 20 subjects received fittings configured to preserve acoustic cues salient for spatial hearing. Following acclimatization, speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured for three competing talkers that were either co-located or spatially separated along the front-back or left-right dimension. In...

Previous findings have demonstrated that hemispheric organization in deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) parallels that of the hearing population, with the left hemisphere showing dominance for grammatical linguistic functions and the right hemisphere showing specialization for non-linguistic spatial functions. The present study addresses two further questions: first, do extra-grammatica...

Objective: Self-report questionnaire is informative to assess general hearing disability. The aims of this study were investigate the reliability Turkish version spatial (SHQ) and analyze validity SHQ by correlation with speech, spatial, qualities (SSQ) matrix sentence test (TMST). Methods: first part was psychometric properties 192 participants (137 normal hearing, 55 loss). In second main ...

In the experiment reported here, 30 participants made a lexical decision on 120 spoken words and 120 spoken nonwords. The words had either an upward (e.g. ‘moon’) or downward (e.g. ‘sewer’) spatial association, or they were neutral in this respect (e.g. ‘letter’). Participants made their lexical decisions by fixating a target located either above or below the centre of the screen, counterbalanc...

The present study investigated haptic spatial configuration learning in deaf individuals, hearing sign language interpreters and hearing controls. In three trials, participants had to match ten shapes haptically to the cut-outs in a board as fast as possible. Deaf and hearing sign language users outperformed the hearing controls. A similar difference was observed for a rotated version of the bo...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the practice of rotating Virtual Reality (VR) three-dimensional (3D) objects will enhance the spatial rotation thinking of deaf and hard-of-hearing children compared to the practice of rotating two-dimensional (2D) objects. Two groups were involved in this study: an experimental group, which included 21 deaf and hardof-hearing children, who playe...