LAUSR

Normal-hearing listeners seem to take advantage of “better-ear glimpsing” when a target signal is masked by interfering sounds with different fluctuations in the two ears, presumably by analyzing small spectro-temporal bins and synthesizing the bins from the ear with the best signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This study investigated the glimpsing mechanism using degraded inputs associated with bilateral cochlear implants (BICIs). BICI and NH listeners identified three-digit sequences spoken by a target talker at 0° with interfering talkers that were co-located at 0° or placed at ±60°. Glimpsing was evaluated by comparing the co-located control condition with either a standard bilateral condition (where the better-ear glimpses alternated across the ears) or a better-ear processed condition (where all the better-ear glimpses were artificially moved to one ear). Both NH and BICI listeners obtained substantial spatial benefit in the better-ear processed condition. However, the spatial benefit in the standard bilat...