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Description
Preliminary findings indicate that cochlear hearing loss impairs discrimination of natural soundscapes according to habitat, time of day, and season.This psychophysical study investigates how cochlear damage affects natural soundscape perception and the influence of ecological factors (habitat, time of day, precipitation level). Normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners identified and estimated the number of biological and geophysical sound sources in soundscapes from nine pristine habitats, four times of day, and two precipitation periods. HI listeners were tested with unprocessed soundscapes, and NH listeners with unprocessed or processed soundscapes simulating absolute threshold elevation, loudness recruitment and reduced frequency selectivity. All sounds were presented diotically at 55 dB(A).Results show that cochlear hearing loss reduces the perceived scene richness, attenuates the influence of ecological factors on perception and reorganizes scene composition: biological sound sources (e.g., birds) tend to be reassigned to geophysical sound categories (e.g., wind). These effects mainly result from absolute-threshold elevation and loudness recruitment, with reduced frequency selectivity further degrading auditory segregation between biological sound sources and reducing the number of perceived birds.Altogether, these findings highlight the dramatic consequences of cochlear damage on natural-scene perception.