ABSTRACT In ecological complex acoustical environments in which several acoustic sources interact, for example several speakers, the input of the auditory system is an acoustical mixture that is the summation of waves from all acoustic sources. Most of the time, it remains possible to split the mixture in auditory streams corresponding to individual acoustic sources. Thus, acoustic mixtures are processed by the auditory system using the mechanisms of Auditory Scene Analysis that have been extensively reviewed by Albert Bregman [Bregman A, Auditory scene analysis, MIT Press, 1990]. Several mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis have already been identified but spectral pitch-cues have been evidenced to be one of the strongest factors of segregation. Cochlear damages are usually related to a loss of cochlear resolution which is responsible for an alteration of the primitive spectral pitch-cues involved in the segregation. The specific difficulties of hearing-impaired listeners in Cocktail-Party situations could be related to this lack of cochlear resolution leading to a deficit in auditory scene analysis mechanisms. Some previous works about the consequences of hearing loss on auditory scene analysis will be reviewed.
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