A crew of listeners with no more than "slight" hearing loss who exhibit binaural deficits also exhibit higher levels of stimulus-independent internal noise.

Listeners having, at most, “slight” hearing loss may exhibit deficits in binaural detection which appear to stem from increased levels of stimulus-dependent, additive internal noise [Bernstein and Trahiotis, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 140, 3540–3548 (2016); J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 144, 292–307 (2018)]. This study reports that a small crew of such listeners also exhibits increased levels of low-level, stimulus-independent, additive internal noise. Detection thresholds were measured in: (1) the NoSπ configuration as a function of masker level; (2) the NρSπ configuration as a function of masker interaural correlation (ρ); (3) “the quiet” for So and Sπ tonal signals. Those measures were combined suitably to yield estimates of stimulus-independent, additive internal noise, separately, at center frequencies of 250, 500, and 4000 Hz. Derived levels of internal noise were found to be elevated, by about 5 dB at 250 and 500 Hz, and by about 9 dB at 4 kHz, for the group of listeners having no more than slight hearing loss and ...