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Proceedings of the 11th Convention of the European Acoustics Association Forum Acusticum / EuroNoise 2025 Málaga, Spain June 23 - 26, 2025 |
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Abstract Interaural coherence (the statistical similarity of signals at both ears, excluding interaural time differences) strongly affects whether a listener perceives a single binaurally fused sound or two separate sounds from each ear. Reverberant environments can decrease the interaural coherence of a signal, decreasing the likelihood of hearing a single, punctate sound. While cochlear implant users are sensitive to changes in interaural coherence, the narrow dynamic range of electric stimulation together with current spread can reduce the difference in the interaural coherence across different reverberant environments. Therefore, cochlear implant users may experience limited differences in binaural fusion across different reverberant environments.The goal of this study was to investigate whether cochlear implant users’ binaural fusion of speech sounds was affected by changes in simulated reverberation. Participants were asked to indicate the size and number of auditory images that they heard in the various simulated environments as an indication of binaural fusion. Preliminary results indicated that, despite the reduced effects of reverberation on interaural coherence after cochlear implant processing, more reverberant simulated rooms resulted in a less binaurally fused image, suggesting that binaural fusion of speech sounds by cochlear implant users is affected by changes in simulated reverberation. |
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