The following are the advantages of binaural hearing:
- Better hearing sensitivity: binaural summation wherein the loudness of sound is increased when perceived from both ear rather than one.
- Greater elimination of background sound
- localization of sound source
- More natural and sound quality
- It also helps to avoid monoaural auditory deprivation in cases where only one hearing aid is fitted on a patient with bilateral hearing loss. Hence avoid the progressive deterioration of supra-threshold hearing in unaided ear.
P.S. The contraindication of binaural use is significant asymmetric speech perception.
Cocktail Effects: First describe by Colin Cherry. It is the phenomenon of being able to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much the same way that party goer can focus an a signal conversation in a noisy room. It may also describe a similar phenomenon that occurs when one may immediately detects word of importance originating from unattended stimuli, for instance hearing one’s name in another conversation.
This requires hearing with both ears. The binaural aspect of cocktail party effect is related to the localization of sound sources.The auditory system has localized a sound source out of a mixture of interfering sound sources.
By wearing two hearing aids, particularly two digital hearing aids that can communicate together instantaneously, people with hearing loss can fight the cocktail party effect. The interaction between the pair simply helps users better determine the location of a sound.
