Critical Bands in the Perception of Speech Signals by Normal and Sensorineural Hearing Loss Listeners

Existing auditory theory suggests a major role for critical bands. Scharf has defined the critical band empirically as “that bandwidth at which subjective responses rather abruptly change” (cf. Scharf, 1970, p. 159). In general, two stimuli separated in frequency by less than a critical bandwidth will interact in one of a number of ways, while two stimuli separated by more than a critical bandwidth will not. The critical band phenomenon has been observed in such perceptual phenomena as masking (Fletcher, 1940; Scharf, 1970), loudness (Zwicker, 1958), and musical consonance (Plomp, 1964).

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