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Augmentative and Alternative... Mar 2024Children with complex communication needs often have multiple disabilities including visual impairments that impact their ability to interact with aided augmentative and...
Children with complex communication needs often have multiple disabilities including visual impairments that impact their ability to interact with aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. Just as the field benefited from a consideration of visual cognitive neuroscience in construction of visual displays, an exploration of psychoacoustics can potentially assist in maximizing the possibilities within AAC systems when the visual channel is either (a) not the primary sensory mode, or (b) is one that can be augmented to ultimately benefit AAC outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to highlight background information about psychoacoustics and present possible future directions for the design of aided AAC system technologies for children with visual impairments who rely on auditory information to learn and utilize AAC.
Topics: Child; Humans; Psychoacoustics; Communication Disorders; Communication Aids for Disabled; Communication; Vision Disorders
PubMed: 37811949
DOI: 10.1080/07434618.2023.2262573 -
Ear and HearingThe aim of the study was to review the demographic and clinical characteristics of all pediatric patients diagnosed with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) by...
OBJECTIVES
The aim of the study was to review the demographic and clinical characteristics of all pediatric patients diagnosed with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) by a pediatric health care system from 2005 to 2020 and examine whether or not our diagnostic capabilities in an ANSD population have evolved as our institutional experience has grown and knowledge in the field has expanded.
DESIGN
This was a retrospective study reviewing the demographic data, medical history, imaging studies, audiological and speech-language data, type of audiological intervention and mode of communication in 260 pediatric patients diagnosed with ANSD over a 15-year period.
RESULTS
The study revealed that male and female children were equally affected with all levels of hearing detection being represented and that about 40% of affected children were premature and most were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. More than a third of our patients presented with a complex medical history and/or neural involvement while about 30% were full-term newborns with normal pregnancy, no prenatal complications or infections, normal birth weight, no neonatal intensive care unit need, no hyperbilirubinemia, no respiratory distress requiring ventilation, and no known syndrome. Review of audiological findings confirms that otoacoustic emissions are not always present in ANSD cases, and that the presence of an abnormal wave V on the auditory brainstem response tracings (only present at high intensities and with an absent intensity/latency function) is not a rare finding and should not immediately be dismissed as not being a case of ANSD.
CONCLUSIONS
This review of ANSD diagnosis over a 15-year period clearly reveals the drastic improvements made in the identification of ANSD, with a drastic decrease in the age at diagnosis and a reduction in the percentage of misdiagnosed patients. The study also stresses the need for continued improvement in different areas such as genetic studies and physiological measures to help clinicians distinguish between pre- and postsynaptic ANSD.
Topics: Child; Female; Humans; Infant, Newborn; Male; Demography; Hearing; Hearing Loss, Central; Retrospective Studies
PubMed: 37036288
DOI: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000001337 -
International Journal of Preventive... 2023Noise is one of the most important harmful factors in the environment. There are limited studies on the effect of noise loudness on brain signals and attention. The main...
BACHGROUND
Noise is one of the most important harmful factors in the environment. There are limited studies on the effect of noise loudness on brain signals and attention. The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between exposure to different loudness levels with brain index, types of attention, and subjective evaluation.
METHODS
Four noises with different loudness levels were generated. Sixty-four male students participated in this study. Each subject performed the integrated visual and auditory continuous performance test (IVA-2) test before and during exposure to noise loudness signals while their electroencephalography was recorded. Finally, the alpha-to-gamma ratio (AGR), five types of attention, and the subjective evaluation results were examined.
RESULTS
During exposure to loudness levels, the AGR and types of attention decreased while the NASA-Tax Load Index (NASA-TLX) scores increased. The noise exposure at lower loudness levels (65 and 75 phon) leads to greater attention dysfunction than at higher loudness. The AGR was significantly changed during exposure to 65 and 75 phon and audio stimuli. This significant change was observed in exposure at all loudness levels except 85 phon and visual stimuli. The divided and sustained attention changed significantly during exposure to all loudness levels and visual stimuli. The AGR had a significant inverse correlation with the total score of NASA-TLX during noise exposure.
CONCLUSIONS
These results can lead to the design of methods to control the psychological effects of noise at specific frequencies (250 and 4000 Hz) and can prevent non-auditory damage to human cognitive performance in industrial and urban environments.
PubMed: 38264555
DOI: 10.4103/ijpvm.ijpvm_395_22 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Sep 2023The use of virtual acoustic environments has become a key element in psychoacoustic and audiologic research, as loudspeaker-based reproduction offers many advantages...
The use of virtual acoustic environments has become a key element in psychoacoustic and audiologic research, as loudspeaker-based reproduction offers many advantages over headphones. However, sound field synthesis methods have mostly been evaluated numerically or perceptually in the center, yielding little insight into the achievable accuracy of the reproduced sound field over a wider reproduction area with loudspeakers in a physical, laboratory-standard reproduction setup. Deviations from the ideal free-field and point-source concepts, such as non-ideal frequency response, non-omnidirectional directivity, acoustic reflections, and diffraction on the necessary hardware, impact the generated sound field. We evaluate reproduction accuracy in a 61-loudspeaker setup, the Simulated Open Field Environment, installed in an anechoic chamber. A first measurement following the ISO 8253-2:2009 standard for free-field audiology shows that the required accuracy is reached with critical-band-wide noise. A second measurement characterizes the sound pressure reproduced with the higher-order Ambisonics basic decoder, with and without max rE weighting, vector base amplitude panning, and nearest loudspeaker mapping on a 187 cm × 187 cm reproduction area. We show that the sweet-spot size observed in measured sound fields follows the rule kr≤N/2 rather than kr≤N but is still large enough to avoid compromising psychoacoustic experiments.
PubMed: 37756576
DOI: 10.1121/10.0021066 -
Data in Brief Apr 2024The present database contains brain activity of subjective tinnitus sufferers at identifying their sound tinnitus. The main objective of this database is to provide...
The present database contains brain activity of subjective tinnitus sufferers at identifying their sound tinnitus. The main objective of this database is to provide spontaneous Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity at rest, and evoked EEG activity when tinnitus sufferers attempt to identify their sound tinnitus among 54 tinnitus sound examples. For the database, 37 volunteers were recruited: 15 ones without tinnitus (Control Group - CG), and 22 ones with tinnitus (Tinnitus Group - TG). For EEG recording, 30 channels were used to record two conditions: 1) , where the volunteer remained in a state of rest with the open eyes for two minutes; and 2) , where the volunteer must have identified his/her sound stimulus by pressing a key. For the active condition, a sound-tinnitus library was generated in accordance with the most typical acoustic properties of tinnitus. The library consisted in ten pure tones (250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 3 kHz, 3.5 kHz, 4 kHz, 6 kHz, 8 kHz, 10 kHz), a White Noise (WN), a Narrow Band noise-High frequencies (NBH, 4 kHz-10 kHz), a Narrow Band noise-Medium frequencies (NBM,1 kHz-4 kHz), a Narrow-Band noise Low frequencies (NBL, 250 Hz-1 kHz), ten pure tones combined with WN, ten pure tones superimposed with NBH, ten tones with NBM and ten pure tones combined with NBL. In total, 54 sound-tinnitus were applied for both groups. In the case of CG, volunteers must have identified a sound at 3.5 kHz. In addition to EEG information, a csv-file with audiometric and psychoacoustic information of volunteers is provided. For TG, this information refers to: 1) hearing level, 2) type of tinnitus, 3) tinnitus frequency, 4) tinnitus perception, 5) Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and 6) Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI). For CG, the information refers to: 1) hearing level, and 2) HADS.
PubMed: 38357451
DOI: 10.1016/j.dib.2024.110142 -
Journal of Autism and Developmental... Aug 2023This study investigated whether individuals with high autistic traits rely on psychoacoustic abilities in affective prosody recognition (APR). In 94 college students,...
This study investigated whether individuals with high autistic traits rely on psychoacoustic abilities in affective prosody recognition (APR). In 94 college students, Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and psychoacoustic abilities were measured. Results indicated that higher AQ, higher rapid auditory processing (RAP), and maleness were associated with a lower APR accuracy for low-intensity prosodies. There was a strong positive association between RAP and APR for participants with high AQ, whereas low-AQ participants showed no such pattern. The findings suggest a reliance on psychoacoustic abilities as compensatory mechanism for deficits in higher-order processing of emotional signals in social interactions, and imply potential benefits of auditory interventions in improving APR among individuals with high autistic traits.
Topics: Humans; Adult; Autistic Disorder; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Auditory Perception; Emotions; Recognition, Psychology
PubMed: 35654923
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-022-05600-4 -
Brain Sciences Sep 2023Student audiology training in tinnitus evaluation and management is heterogeneous and has been found to be insufficient. We designed a new clinical simulation laboratory...
PURPOSE
Student audiology training in tinnitus evaluation and management is heterogeneous and has been found to be insufficient. We designed a new clinical simulation laboratory for training students on psychoacoustic measurements of tinnitus: one student plays the role of the tinnitus patient, wearing a device producing a sound like tinnitus on one ear, while another student plays the role of the audiologist, evaluating their condition. The objective of the study was to test this new clinical simulation laboratory of tinnitus from the perspective of the students.
METHOD
This study reports the findings from twenty-one audiology students (20 female and 1 male, mean age = 29, SD = 7.7) who participated in this laboratory for a mandatory audiology class at the Laval University of Quebec. Three students had hearing loss (one mild, two moderate). All students played the role of both the clinician and the patient, alternately. They also had to fill out a questionnaire about their overall experience of the laboratory.
RESULTS
The qualitative analysis revealed three main themes: "Benefits of the laboratory on future practice", "Barriers and facilitators of the psychoacoustic assessment", and "Awareness of living with tinnitus". The participants reported that this experience would have a positive impact on their ability to manage tinnitus patients in their future career.
CONCLUSION
This fast, cheap, and effective clinical simulation method could be used by audiology and other healthcare educators to strengthen students' skills and confidence in tinnitus evaluation and management. The protocol is made available to all interested parties.
PubMed: 37759939
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13091338 -
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Dec 2023Within the broader context of improving interactions between artificial intelligence and humans, the question has arisen regarding whether auditory and rhythmic support...
Within the broader context of improving interactions between artificial intelligence and humans, the question has arisen regarding whether auditory and rhythmic support could increase attention for visual stimuli that do not stand out clearly from an information stream. To this end, we designed an experiment inspired by pip-and-pop but more appropriate for eliciting attention and P3a-event-related potentials (ERPs). In this study, the aim was to distinguish between targets and distractors based on the subject's electroencephalography (EEG) data. We achieved this objective by employing different machine learning (ML) methods for both individual-subject (IS) and cross-subject (CS) models. Finally, we investigated which EEG channels and time points were used by the model to make its predictions using saliency maps. We were able to successfully perform the aforementioned classification task for both the IS and CS scenarios, reaching classification accuracies up to 76%. In accordance with the literature, the model primarily used the parietal-occipital electrodes between 200 ms and 300 ms after the stimulus to make its prediction. The findings from this research contribute to the development of more effective P300-based brain-computer interfaces. Furthermore, they validate the EEG data collected in our experiment.
Topics: Humans; Artificial Intelligence; Acoustic Stimulation; Electroencephalography; Attention; Event-Related Potentials, P300; Evoked Potentials
PubMed: 38067961
DOI: 10.3390/s23239588 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... May 2024Speakers can place their prosodic prominence on any locations within a sentence, generating focus prosody for listeners to perceive new information. This study aimed to... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
Speakers can place their prosodic prominence on any locations within a sentence, generating focus prosody for listeners to perceive new information. This study aimed to investigate age-related changes in the bottom-up processing of focus perception in Jianghuai Mandarin by clarifying the perceptual cues and the auditory processing abilities involved in the identification of focus locations. Young, middle-aged, and older speakers of Jianghuai Mandarin completed a focus identification task and an auditory perception task. The results showed that increasing age led to a decrease in listeners' accuracy rate in identifying focus locations, with all participants performing the worst when dynamic pitch cues were inaccessible. Auditory processing abilities did not predict focus perception performance in young and middle-aged listeners but accounted significantly for the variance in older adults' performance. These findings suggest that age-related deteriorations in focus perception can be largely attributed to declined auditory processing of perceptual cues. Poor ability to extract frequency modulation cues may be the most important underlying psychoacoustic factor for older adults' difficulties in perceiving focus prosody in Jianghuai Mandarin. The results contribute to our understanding of the bottom-up mechanisms involved in linguistic prosody processing in aging adults, particularly in tonal languages.
Topics: Humans; Middle Aged; Aged; Male; Female; Aging; Young Adult; Adult; Speech Perception; Cues; Age Factors; Speech Acoustics; Acoustic Stimulation; Pitch Perception; Language; Voice Quality; Psychoacoustics; Audiometry, Speech
PubMed: 38717206
DOI: 10.1121/10.0025928 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Aug 2023In songbirds, singing with precision (vocal consistency) has been proposed to reflect whole-organism performance. Vocal consistency is measured using spectrogram cross...
In songbirds, singing with precision (vocal consistency) has been proposed to reflect whole-organism performance. Vocal consistency is measured using spectrogram cross correlation (SPCC) to assess the acoustic similarity between subsequent renditions of the same note. To quantify how SPCC is sensitive to the acoustic discrepancies found in birdsong, we created a set of 40 000 synthetic sounds that were designed based on the songs of 345 species. This set included 10 000 reference sounds and 30 000 inexact variants with quantified differences in frequency, bandwidth, or duration with respect to the reference sounds. We found that SPCC is sensitive to acoustic discrepancies within the natural range of vocal consistency, supporting the use of this method as a tool to assess vocal consistency in songbirds. Importantly, the sensitivity of SPCC was significantly affected by the bandwidth of sounds. The predictions derived from the analysis of synthetic sounds were then validated using 954 song recordings from 345 species (20 families). Based on psychoacoustic studies from birds and humans, we propose that the sensitivity of SPCC to acoustic discrepancies mirrors a perceptual bias in sound discrimination. Nevertheless, we suggest the tool be used with care, since sound bandwidth varies considerably between singing styles and therefore, SPCC scores may not be comparable.
Topics: Humans; Animals; Vocalization, Animal; Sound; Songbirds; Voice; Acoustics
PubMed: 37550240
DOI: 10.1121/10.0020543