Loudness context effects and auditory enhancement in normal, impaired, and electric hearing

Auditory context effects are an important part of perception, and reflect how previous or simultaneous input affects the perception and processing of sound. Such context effects may be important for perceiving speech in the face of variable talker acoustics, different room environments, and background noise. This article reviews recent work that has compared the perception and performance of normal-hearing listeners with that of hearing-impaired listeners and cochlear-implant users, in an attempt to understand the neural underpinnings of the effects, with the longer-term goal of restoring weakened or absent context effects via signal processing in these clinical populations.