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Journal of Voice : Official Journal of... Sep 2017This study proposes that there are two types of sensorimotor mismapping in poor-pitch singing: erroneous mapping and no mapping. We created operational definitions for...
OBJECTIVE
This study proposes that there are two types of sensorimotor mismapping in poor-pitch singing: erroneous mapping and no mapping. We created operational definitions for the two types of mismapping based on the precision of pitch-matching and predicted that in the two types of mismapping, phonation differs in terms of accuracy and the dependence on the articulation consistency between the target and the intended vocal action. The study aimed to test this hypothesis by examining the reliability and criterion-related validity of the operational definitions.
STUDY DESIGN
A within-subject design was used in this study.
METHODS
Thirty-two participants identified as poor-pitch singers were instructed to vocally imitate pure tones and to imitate their own vocal recordings with the same articulation as self-targets and with different articulation from self-targets.
RESULTS
Definitions of the types of mismapping were demonstrated to be reliable with the split-half approach and to have good criterion-related validity with findings that pitch-matching with no mapping was less accurate and more dependent on the articulation consistency between the target and the intended vocal action than pitch-matching with erroneous mapping was. Furthermore, the precision of pitch-matching was positively associated with its accuracy and its dependence on articulation consistency when mismapping was analyzed on a continuum. Additionally, the data indicated that the self-imitation advantage was a function of articulation consistency.
CONCLUSION
Types of sensorimotor mismapping lead to pitch-matching that differs in accuracy and its dependence on the articulation consistency between the target and the intended vocal action. Additionally, articulation consistency produces the self-advantage.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Acoustics; Adolescent; Adult; Female; Humans; Imitative Behavior; Male; Music; Phonation; Pitch Discrimination; Pitch Perception; Psychoacoustics; Sensorimotor Cortex; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Singing; Voice Quality; Young Adult
PubMed: 28347617
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2017.02.018 -
International Journal of Environmental... Jan 2021We are on the cusp of a revolution in the aviation sector, driven by the significant progress in electric power and battery technologies, and autonomous systems. Several... (Review)
Review
We are on the cusp of a revolution in the aviation sector, driven by the significant progress in electric power and battery technologies, and autonomous systems. Several industry leaders and governmental agencies are currently investigating the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or "drones" as commonly known, for an ever-growing number of applications-from blue light services to parcel delivery and urban mobility. Undoubtedly, the operation of UAVs will lead to noise exposure, which has the potential to become a significant public health issue. This paper first describes the main acoustic and operational characteristics of UAVs, as an unconventional noise source compared to conventional civil aircraft. Gaps in the literature and the regulations on the noise metrics and acceptable noise levels are identified and discussed. The state-of-the-art evidence on human response to aircraft and other environmental noise sources is reviewed and its application for UAVs discussed. A methodological framework is proposed for building psychoacoustic knowledge, to inform systems and operations development to limit the noise impact on communities.
Topics: Aircraft; Aviation; Humans; Psychoacoustics
PubMed: 33466937
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18020682 -
Journal of Voice : Official Journal of... Nov 2019A limited number of experiments have investigated the perception of strain compared to the voice qualities of breathiness and roughness despite its widespread occurrence...
BACKGROUND
A limited number of experiments have investigated the perception of strain compared to the voice qualities of breathiness and roughness despite its widespread occurrence in patients who have hyperfunctional voice disorders, adductor spasmodic dysphonia, and vocal fold paralysis among others.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study is to determine the perceptual basis of strain through identification and exploration of acoustic and psychoacoustic measures.
METHODS
Twelve listeners evaluated the degree of strain for 28 dysphonic phonation samples on a five-point rating scale task. Computational estimates based on cepstrum, sharpness, and spectral moments (linear and transformed with auditory processing front-end) were correlated to the perceptual ratings.
RESULTS
Perceived strain was strongly correlated with cepstral peak prominence, sharpness, and a subset of the spectral metrics. Spectral energy distribution measures from the output of an auditory processing front-end (ie, excitation pattern and specific loudness pattern) accounted for 77-79% of the model variance for strained voices in combination with the cepstral measure.
CONCLUSIONS
Modeling the perception of strain using an auditory front-end prior to acoustic analysis provides better characterization of the perceptual ratings of strain, similar to our prior work on breathiness and roughness. Results also provide evidence that the sharpness model of Fastl and Zwicker (2007) is one of the strong predictors of strain perception.
Topics: Acoustics; Auditory Perception; Dysphonia; Humans; Judgment; Models, Theoretical; Observer Variation; Psychoacoustics; Severity of Illness Index; Sound Spectrography; Stress, Physiological; Voice Quality
PubMed: 30064717
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2018.06.005 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Sep 2019Little is known about the nature or extent of everyday variability in voice quality. This paper describes a series of principal component analyses to explore within- and...
Little is known about the nature or extent of everyday variability in voice quality. This paper describes a series of principal component analyses to explore within- and between-talker acoustic variation and the extent to which they conform to expectations derived from current models of voice perception. Based on studies of faces and cognitive models of speaker recognition, the authors hypothesized that a few measures would be important across speakers, but that much of within-speaker variability would be idiosyncratic. Analyses used multiple sentence productions from 50 female and 50 male speakers of English, recorded over three days. Twenty-six acoustic variables from a psychoacoustic model of voice quality were measured every 5 ms on vowels and approximants. Across speakers the balance between higher harmonic amplitudes and inharmonic energy in the voice accounted for the most variance (females = 20%, males = 22%). Formant frequencies and their variability accounted for an additional 12% of variance across speakers. Remaining variance appeared largely idiosyncratic, suggesting that the speaker-specific voice space is different for different people. Results further showed that voice spaces for individuals and for the population of talkers have very similar acoustic structures. Implications for prototype models of voice perception and recognition are discussed.
Topics: Adult; Biological Variation, Individual; Biological Variation, Population; Female; Humans; Male; Phonetics; Psychoacoustics; Speech Acoustics; Voice
PubMed: 31590565
DOI: 10.1121/1.5125134 -
Advances in Experimental Medicine and... 2016Behavioral methods have been critical in the study of auditory perception and discrimination in fishes. In this chapter, we review some of the common methods used in... (Review)
Review
Behavioral methods have been critical in the study of auditory perception and discrimination in fishes. In this chapter, we review some of the common methods used in fish psychoacoustics. We discuss associative methods, such as operant, avoidance, and classical conditioning, and their use in constructing audiograms, measuring frequency selectivity, and auditory stream segregation. We also discuss the measurement of innate behavioral responses, such as the acoustic startle response (ASR), prepulse inhibition (PPI), and phonotaxis, and their use in the assessment of fish hearing to determine auditory thresholds and in the testing of mechanisms for sound source localization. For each psychoacoustic method, we provide examples of their use and discuss the parameters and situations where such methods can be best utilized. In the case of the ASR, we show how this method can be used to construct and compare audiograms between two species of larval fishes, the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and the zebrafish (Danio rerio). We also discuss considerations for experimental design with respect to stimulus presentation and threshold criteria and how these techniques can be used in future studies to investigate auditory perception in fishes.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Animals; Auditory Threshold; Echolocation; Fishes; Hearing; Perciformes; Psychoacoustics; Reflex, Startle; Zebrafish
PubMed: 26515314
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-21059-9_8 -
Current Topics in Behavioral... 2021Tinnitus, the perception of sound in the absence of a physical sound in the environment, is highly heterogeneous. It varies in its etiology, characteristics, and impact...
Tinnitus, the perception of sound in the absence of a physical sound in the environment, is highly heterogeneous. It varies in its etiology, characteristics, and impact on an individual's life. The sound is commonly described as "ringing," "buzzing," "crickets," "hissing," "humming." Tinnitus can be acute or chronic, mild or disabling. It can be perceived unilaterally or, more commonly, bilaterally. The sound and its location differ from person to person and fluctuate in the same individual over a certain period of time. This heterogeneity in characterization has important implications for research and clinical practice. Identifying patterns in how tinnitus sounds and its relationship to hearing may aid in identifying different forms of tinnitus and revealing their underlying mechanisms. However, the subjective nature of characterizing tinnitus makes it difficult to reliably define and measure. This chapter will focus on reviewing the psychoacoustic assessment of tinnitus, its relationship to cognitive and behavioral aspects of tinnitus, and its neuropathophysiology. In particular, it will describe the heterogeneity of tinnitus and tinnitus matching, and how individual variability in measures may be used to guide treatment and as a prognostic factor.
Topics: Humans; Psychoacoustics; Tinnitus
PubMed: 33550568
DOI: 10.1007/7854_2020_211 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Jul 2015How do we recognize what one person is saying when others are speaking at the same time? This review summarizes widespread research in psychoacoustics, auditory scene... (Review)
Review
How do we recognize what one person is saying when others are speaking at the same time? This review summarizes widespread research in psychoacoustics, auditory scene analysis, and attention, all dealing with early processing and selection of speech, which has been stimulated by this question. Important effects occurring at the peripheral and brainstem levels are mutual masking of sounds and "unmasking" resulting from binaural listening. Psychoacoustic models have been developed that can predict these effects accurately, albeit using computational approaches rather than approximations of neural processing. Grouping—the segregation and streaming of sounds—represents a subsequent processing stage that interacts closely with attention. Sounds can be easily grouped—and subsequently selected—using primitive features such as spatial location and fundamental frequency. More complex processing is required when lexical, syntactic, or semantic information is used. Whereas it is now clear that such processing can take place preattentively, there also is evidence that the processing depth depends on the task-relevancy of the sound. This is consistent with the presence of a feedback loop in attentional control, triggering enhancement of to-be-selected input. Despite recent progress, there are still many unresolved issues: there is a need for integrative models that are neurophysiologically plausible, for research into grouping based on other than spatial or voice-related cues, for studies explicitly addressing endogenous and exogenous attention, for an explanation of the remarkable sluggishness of attention focused on dynamically changing sounds, and for research elucidating the distinction between binaural speech perception and sound localization.
Topics: Attention; Cues; Humans; Perceptual Masking; Psychoacoustics; Sound Localization; Sound Spectrography; Speech; Speech Acoustics; Speech Perception
PubMed: 25828463
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-015-0882-9 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Apr 2017Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are one of the most cosmopolitan marine mammal species with potential widespread exposure to anthropogenic noise impacts. Previous...
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are one of the most cosmopolitan marine mammal species with potential widespread exposure to anthropogenic noise impacts. Previous audiometric data on this species were from two adult females [Szymanski, Bain, Kiehl, Pennington, Wong, and Henry (1999). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 1322-1326] and one sub-adult male [Hall and Johnson (1972). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 51, 515-517] with apparent high-frequency hearing loss. All three killer whales had best sensitivity between 15 and 20 kHz, with thresholds lower than any odontocete tested to date, suggesting this species might be particularly sensitive to acoustic disturbance. The current study reports the behavioral audiograms of eight killer whales at two different facilities. Hearing sensitivity was measured from 100 Hz to 160 kHz in killer whales ranging in age from 12 to 52 year. Previously measured low thresholds at 20 kHz were not replicated in any individual. Hearing in the killer whales was generally similar to other delphinids, with lowest threshold (49 dB re 1 μPa) at approximately 34 kHz, good hearing (i.e., within 20 dB of best sensitivity) from 5 to 81 kHz, and low- and high-frequency hearing cutoffs (>100 dB re μPa) of 600 Hz and 114 kHz, respectively.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Animals; Audiometry; Auditory Threshold; Body Size; Female; Hearing; Male; Psychoacoustics; Reaction Time; Swimming; Time Factors; Whale, Killer
PubMed: 28464669
DOI: 10.1121/1.4979116 -
CoDAS 2019To compare clinical characteristics of tinnitus and interference in quality of life in individuals with and without associated hearing loss, as well as to discuss the...
PURPOSE
To compare clinical characteristics of tinnitus and interference in quality of life in individuals with and without associated hearing loss, as well as to discuss the association of quantitative measurements and qualitative instruments.
METHODS
A quantitative, cross-sectional and comparative study approved by the Research Ethics Committee (No. 973.314/CAEE: 41634815.3.0000.0106) was carried out. The responses of the psychoacoustic assessment of tinnitus (intensity, frequency, minimum masking level and loudness discomfort level for pure tone and speech), as well as the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) questionnaire, and the visual analogue scale (VAS) were compared between 15 patients with tinnitus and peripheral hearing loss (group I) and 16 adults with normal hearing (group II).
RESULTS
The mean VAS and THI scores obtained in GI were 5.1 (+1.5) and 42.3 (+18), and in GII, 5.7 (+2.6) and 32.7 (+25), respectively. This result suggests moderate GI annoyance and moderate/mild GII annoyance (p>0.005). There was a positive and moderate correlation between THI and VAS only in GII. In the psychoacoustic evaluation, significant differences were observed between the groups regarding the measurement of loudness (*p=0.013) and the minimum masking level (*p=0.001).
CONCLUSION
There was no direct influence of the presence of hearing loss in relation to the impact of tinnitus. The differences found between the groups regarding the psychoacoustics measures can be justified by the presence of cochlear damage. The objective measurement of tinnitus, regardless of the presence or absence of peripheral hearing loss, is an important instrument to be used along with self-evaluation measures.
Topics: Adult; Age Factors; Audiometry; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Hearing Loss; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Prospective Studies; Psychoacoustics; Quality of Life; Retrospective Studies; Severity of Illness Index; Surveys and Questionnaires; Tinnitus; Visual Analog Scale; Young Adult
PubMed: 31644709
DOI: 10.1590/2317-1782/20192018029 -
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Jan 2021Musical expertise has been shown to positively influence high-level speech abilities such as novel word learning. This study addresses the question whether low-level...
Musical expertise has been shown to positively influence high-level speech abilities such as novel word learning. This study addresses the question whether low-level enhanced perceptual skills causally drives successful novel word learning. We used a longitudinal approach with psychoacoustic procedures to train 2 groups of nonmusicians either on pitch discrimination or on intensity discrimination, using harmonic complex sounds. After short (approximately 3 hr) psychoacoustic training, discrimination thresholds were lower on the specific feature (pitch or intensity) that was trained. Moreover, compared to the intensity group, participants trained on pitch were faster to categorize words varying in pitch. Finally, although the N400 components in both the word learning phase and in the semantic task were larger in the pitch group than in the intensity group, no between-group differences were found at the behavioral level in the semantic task. Thus, these results provide mixed evidence that enhanced perception of relevant features through a few hours of acoustic training with harmonic sounds causally impacts the categorization of speech sounds as well as novel word learning. These results are discussed within the framework of near and far transfer effects from music training to speech processing.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Brain Waves; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Female; Humans; Male; Pitch Perception; Psychoacoustics; Speech Perception
PubMed: 32985943
DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01629