Abstract
People with unilateral hearing impairment cannot obtain cues from the interaural acoustical difference between their ears, so they usually have difficulty in locating sounds. But, they may compensate for this by utilizing visual information and/or searching for acoustical information with behavior such as head movements. The present study examined the effect of positional information on sound localization by people with unilateral hearing impairment, and compared 2 indices, accuracy and searching behavior. Accuracy scores in a condition with information presented about the position of sound sources were better than those in a condition without that information. Therefore, it was suggested that information about the sound source may increase accuracy. Among people with unilateral hearing impairment, the amount of searching behavior was different between the 2 conditions. While activity of 2 participants increased in the condition with information about the position of the sound source, 1 person's activity decreased. It was postulated that the timing of the onset of the hearing impairment may be a factor influencing to ability to localize, but other factors should be investigated.
