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Journal of Vision Apr 2024Saccadic choice tasks use eye movements as a response method, typically in a task where observers are asked to saccade as quickly as possible to an image of a...
Saccadic choice tasks use eye movements as a response method, typically in a task where observers are asked to saccade as quickly as possible to an image of a prespecified target category. Using this approach, face-selective saccades have been observed within 100 ms poststimulus. When taking into account oculomotor processing, this suggests that faces can be detected in as little as 70 to 80 ms. It has therefore been suggested that face detection must occur during the initial feedforward sweep, since this latency leaves little time for feedback processing. In the current experiment, we tested this hypothesis using backward masking-a technique shown to primarily disrupt feedback processing while leaving feedforward activation relatively intact. Based on minimum saccadic reaction time, we found that face detection benefited from ultra-fast, accurate saccades within 110 to 160 ms and that these eye movements are obtainable even under extreme masking conditions that limit perceptual awareness. However, masking did significantly increase the median SRT for faces. In the manual responses, we found remarkable detection accuracy for faces and houses, even when participants indicated having no visual experience of the test images. These results provide evidence for the view that the saccadic bias to faces is initiated by coarse information used to categorize faces in the feedforward sweep but that, in most cases, additional processing is required to quickly reach the threshold for saccade initiation.
Topics: Humans; Saccades; Eye Movements; Cognition; Reaction Time
PubMed: 38630459
DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.4.16 -
Alternative Therapies in Health and... Mar 2024Tinnitus is one of the most common otologic symptoms and has a serious effect on the quality of life. The pathophysiology of tinnitus is not fully understood and no...
OBJECTIVE
Tinnitus is one of the most common otologic symptoms and has a serious effect on the quality of life. The pathophysiology of tinnitus is not fully understood and no consensus has been reached on an effective treatment method for tinnitus. To evaluate the effectiveness of the kinesiotape (KT) method in subjective tinnitus treatment.
MATERIAL AND METHOD
KT is a method used for sensory simulation. It is a method that aims to increase muscle function, positively affect lymphatic fluid and blood circulation, and stimulate the neurological system. In this study, KT method was applied and the study was prospective. 34 individuals with subjective tinnitus, and normal hearing were included. The study group (n = 17) was informed about tinnitus and KT was applied for 4 weeks, the control group (n = 17) was only informed about tinnitus. The information about tinnitus given to both groups included verbal information about what tinnitus is, how to deal with tinnitus and basic recommendations. All individuals were initially administered tinnitus measurements (pitch, loudness, minimal masking level, residual inhibition), Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), SF-36, and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). All evaluations were repeated after 4 weeks.
RESULTS
Tinnitus loudness and pitch decreased in the KT group (P < .05). In both groups, there was a significant difference between the first and last measurements of the severity of tinnitus, the degree of discomfort from tinnitus with VAS, and the catastrophic and total scores of THI (P < .05). KT group, the emotional sub-score of THI improved significantly with KT (P < .05), and significant improvement was achieved in the BDI scores (P < .05). There was a significant difference in the SF-36 after the application of KT (P < .05).
CONCLUSION
In subjective tinnitus, the pathophysiology of which is unknown and there is no consensus on an effective treatment method, improvement in tinnitus severity, quality of life and depression perception in both audiologic and perceptual evaluations were obtained as a result of KT application. We believe that KT, which has no side effects and is easy to apply, is a method that can be easily used in individuals with subjective tinnitus.
Topics: Humans; Tinnitus; Male; Female; Adult; Middle Aged; Athletic Tape; Prospective Studies; Quality of Life; Treatment Outcome
PubMed: 38581339
DOI: No ID Found -
International Archives of... Jan 2024The voice and hearing can be affected to different degrees by aging, which can cause communication difficulties for elderly people. Vocal production requires...
The voice and hearing can be affected to different degrees by aging, which can cause communication difficulties for elderly people. Vocal production requires effective temporal auditory processing at central levels within the nervous system, which can be compromised by the aging process. To analyze the correlation between voice and temporal auditory processing in older adults. A total of 40 elderly people aged 60 years or older were subdivided into 2 groups according to the presence or absence of vocal symptoms measured by the Voice Symptom Scale. All of the participants were submitted to auditory temporal tests, vocal self-assessment, and acoustic and perceptual auditory analyses of voice. Most of the subjects assessed had decreased voice intensity and normal variability in terms of vocal quality. The performance was normal in the Pitch Pattern Sequence test and altered in the Random Gap Detection test. In the Masking Period Pattern test, the detection thresholds for the target signal were increased in the presence of masking in different temporal target signal positions. Only pitch differed between the two groups. There were differences between the genders regarding frequency, shimmer, the overall severity of the alteration, and roughness. There was a correlation regarding temporal resolution ability and the overall severity of the alteration and roughness of the voice. There is a central auditory impairment in temporal resolution which is correlated with vocal alterations in the elderly.
PubMed: 38322429
DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1768139 -
JASA Express Letters Jul 2023In this study, the physiological and perceptual correlates of auditory function in student musicians and nonmusicians with normal hearing thresholds were investigated....
In this study, the physiological and perceptual correlates of auditory function in student musicians and nonmusicians with normal hearing thresholds were investigated. The measures involved were auditory brainstem responses as a function of stimulation rate, spatial release from masking, and word intensity rollover functions. The results indicated that as the stimulation rate was increased, the wave I amplitude reductions were more abrupt in musicians than in nonmusicians. However, no significant group differences were observed for speech tasks. There were also no significant correlations between the results of speech perception and the measures of peripheral neural function.
Topics: Humans; Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; Speech Perception; Hearing; Hearing Loss; Deafness
PubMed: 37404163
DOI: 10.1121/10.0019885 -
BioRxiv : the Preprint Server For... Apr 2024Our perceptual system bins elements of the speech signal into categories to make speech perception manageable. Here, we aimed to test whether hearing speech in...
Our perceptual system bins elements of the speech signal into categories to make speech perception manageable. Here, we aimed to test whether hearing speech in categories (as opposed to a continuous/gradient fashion) affords yet another benefit to speech recognition: parsing noisy speech at the "cocktail party." We measured speech recognition in a simulated 3D cocktail party environment. We manipulated task difficulty by varying the number of additional maskers presented at other spatial locations in the horizontal soundfield (1-4 talkers) and via forward vs. time-reversed maskers, promoting more and less informational masking (IM), respectively. In separate tasks, we measured isolated phoneme categorization using two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) and visual analog scaling (VAS) tasks designed to promote more/less categorical hearing and thus test putative links between categorization and real-world speech-in-noise skills. We first show that listeners can only monitor up to ~3 talkers despite up to 5 in the soundscape and streaming is not related to extended high-frequency hearing thresholds (though QuickSIN scores are). We then confirm speech streaming accuracy and speed decline with additional competing talkers and amidst forward compared to reverse maskers with added IM. Dividing listeners into "discrete" vs. "continuous" categorizers based on their VAS labeling (i.e., whether responses were binary or continuous judgments), we then show the degree of IM experienced at the cocktail party is predicted by their degree of categoricity in phoneme labeling; more discrete listeners are less susceptible to IM than their gradient responding peers. Our results establish a link between speech categorization skills and cocktail party processing, with a categorical (rather than gradient) listening strategy benefiting degraded speech perception. These findings imply figure-ground deficits common in many disorders might arise through a surprisingly simple mechanism: a failure to properly bin sounds into categories.
PubMed: 38617284
DOI: 10.1101/2024.04.03.587795 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Apr 2024The processing and perception of amplitude modulation (AM) in the auditory system reflect a frequency-selective process, often described as a modulation filterbank....
The processing and perception of amplitude modulation (AM) in the auditory system reflect a frequency-selective process, often described as a modulation filterbank. Previous studies on perceptual AM masking reported similar results for older listeners with hearing impairment (HI listeners) and young listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners), suggesting no effects of age or hearing loss on AM frequency selectivity. However, recent evidence has shown that age, independently of hearing loss, adversely affects AM frequency selectivity. Hence, this study aimed to disentangle the effects of hearing loss and age. A simultaneous AM masking paradigm was employed, using a sinusoidal carrier at 2.8 kHz, narrowband noise modulation maskers, and target modulation frequencies of 4, 16, 64, and 128 Hz. The results obtained from young (n = 3, 24-30 years of age) and older (n = 10, 63-77 years of age) HI listeners were compared to previously obtained data from young and older NH listeners. Notably, the HI listeners generally exhibited lower (unmasked) AM detection thresholds and greater AM frequency selectivity than their NH counterparts in both age groups. Overall, the results suggest that age negatively affects AM frequency selectivity for both NH and HI listeners, whereas hearing loss improves AM detection and AM selectivity, likely due to the loss of peripheral compression.
Topics: Humans; Hearing Loss; Deafness; Data Compression; Perceptual Masking
PubMed: 38607268
DOI: 10.1121/10.0025541 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Apr 2024Urban expansion has increased pollution, including both physical (e.g., exhaust, litter) and sensory (e.g., anthropogenic noise) components. Urban avian species tend to... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
Urban expansion has increased pollution, including both physical (e.g., exhaust, litter) and sensory (e.g., anthropogenic noise) components. Urban avian species tend to increase the frequency and/or amplitude of songs to reduce masking by low-frequency noise. Nevertheless, song propagation to the receiver can also be constrained by the environment. We know relatively little about how this propagation may be altered across species that (1) vary in song complexity and (2) inhabit areas along an urbanization gradient. We investigated differences in song amplitude, attenuation, and active space, or the maximum distance a receiver can detect a signal, in two human-commensal species: the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus). We described urbanization both discretely and quantitatively to investigate the habitat characteristics most responsible for propagation changes. We found mixed support for our hypothesis of urban-specific degradation of songs. Urban songs propagated with higher amplitude; however, urban song fidelity was species-specific and showed lowered active space for urban house finch songs. Taken together, our results suggest that urban environments may constrain the propagation of vocal signals in species-specific manners. Ultimately, this has implications for the ability of urban birds to communicate with potential mates or kin.
Topics: Animals; Vocalization, Animal; Urbanization; Finches; Species Specificity; Sparrows; Noise; Sound Spectrography; Ecosystem; Humans; Perceptual Masking; Male
PubMed: 38662608
DOI: 10.1121/10.0025765 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Oct 2023Previous studies using breaking continuous flash suppression observed that the content of visual working memory (VWM) influences the priority for accessing visual...
Previous studies using breaking continuous flash suppression observed that the content of visual working memory (VWM) influences the priority for accessing visual awareness. However, most studies have used simple stimuli, whereas real-life objects are typically more meaningful and contain more perceptual information than simple objects. In this study, we intermixed a delayed match-to-sample task to manipulate the content of VWM, and a breaking repeated masking suppression (b-RMS) task to investigate whether this memory-based effect in conscious access can be extended to a new sandwich masking task and real-life stimuli. The results revealed that memory-congruent objects broke RMS faster than incongruent objects for both simple and real-life objects. Specifically, for simple objects, color-matching targets broke RMS faster than color-mismatching targets, whereas state-matching targets broke RMS faster than state-mismatching targets for real-life objects. These results suggest that the faster detection of VWM-matching over VWM mismatching stimuli-which has been mostly studied using only one type of task (b-CFS) and stimulus (colored shapes)-extends to (1) yet another masking technique (b-RMS) and to (2) a novel stimulus type (real-life objects), providing evidence that memory-based biases in conscious access are a ubiquitous phenomenon.
Topics: Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Consciousness; Bias; Visual Perception
PubMed: 37226040
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02726-0 -
Psychological Science Sep 2023Does sensory information reach conscious awareness in a discrete, all-or-nothing manner or a gradual, continuous manner? To answer this question, we examined behavioral...
Does sensory information reach conscious awareness in a discrete, all-or-nothing manner or a gradual, continuous manner? To answer this question, we examined behavioral performance across four different paradigms that manipulate visual awareness: the attentional blink, backward masking, the Sperling iconic memory paradigm, and retro-cuing. We then asked how well we could account for participants' ( = 112 adults) behavior using a signal detection framework that factors in psychophysical scaling to model participants' responses along a single continuum. We found that this model easily accounted for the data from each of these diverse paradigms. Moreover, we reanalyzed the data from prior studies that had posited a discrete view of perceptual awareness and found that our continuous signal detection model outperformed the models that had been used to support an all-or-nothing view of consciousness. This set of data is consistent with the idea that conscious awareness occurs along a graded continuum.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Attentional Blink; Consciousness; Cues; Reproduction
PubMed: 37650455
DOI: 10.1177/09567976231186798 -
International Journal of Audiology Nov 2023This study explored the effects of different face masks on school-age children's and young adults' word recognition.
OBJECTIVES
This study explored the effects of different face masks on school-age children's and young adults' word recognition.
DESIGN
Speech recognition thresholds were measured adaptively in a two-talker speech masker using a closed-set picture pointing task. Target words were recorded by a female talker in five conditions: no mask, transparent mask, face shield, N95 mask and surgical mask.
STUDY SAMPLES
Thirty children (8-12 years) and 25 adults (18-25 years) with normal hearing.
RESULTS
Both children's and adults' word recognition was most negatively impacted by the face shield. Children's recognition was also impaired by the transparent mask. No negative effects were observed for the N95 or surgical mask for either age group.
CONCLUSION
School-age children, like young adults, are negatively affected by face masks when recognising speech in a two-talker speech masker, but the effects depend on the type of face mask being worn. Acoustic analyses suggest that the reflective materials used for masks impact speech signal quality and impair word recognition.
Topics: Young Adult; Humans; Child; Female; Speech; Masks; Speech Perception; Perceptual Masking; Child Development
PubMed: 36688609
DOI: 10.1080/14992027.2023.2168218