The effect of hearing loss on source-distance dependent speech intelligibility in rooms

Westermann and Buchholz [(2015). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 137(2), 757–767] found substantial improvements in speech reception thresholds (SRTs) for normal hearing listeners in a reverberant auditorium when the target talker was separated in distance from a two-talker masker. This study applied similar methodology, but tested listeners with a hearing impairment. On average, the participants received a 7 dB benefit in SRTs when the target was fixed at 0.5m and the masker was moved from 0.5 to 10 m. But when the target was moved away, the SRTs increased by 5 dB. This indicates that hearing impaired listeners have difficulties suppressing nearby maskers while focusing attention on a far target.