-
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Jan 2009This paper suggests that critical ratios obtained in noise-masked tone studies are not good indicators of critical bandwidths obtained in both human and nonhuman animal...
This paper suggests that critical ratios obtained in noise-masked tone studies are not good indicators of critical bandwidths obtained in both human and nonhuman animal subjects. A probe-tone detection study using chinchilla subjects suggests that they may be broadband processors in detection tasks as opposed to human subjects who use narrow-band, critical-band processing. If chinchilla and other nonhuman animal subjects are wideband processors, this can partially explain why their critical ratios are significantly greater than those measured in human subjects. Thus, large critical ratios obtained for nonhuman animals may indicate processing inefficiency rather than wide critical bands.
Topics: Adult; Animals; Chinchilla; Female; Humans; Male; Noise; Psychoacoustics; Psychometrics; Signal Detection, Psychological
PubMed: 19173418
DOI: 10.1121/1.3037232 -
The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Aug 1998The human neuroanatomical substrate of sound intensity discrimination was investigated by combining psychoacoustics and functional neuroimaging. Seven normal subjects...
The human neuroanatomical substrate of sound intensity discrimination was investigated by combining psychoacoustics and functional neuroimaging. Seven normal subjects were trained to detect deviant sounds presented with a slightly higher intensity than a standard harmonic sound, using a Go/No Go paradigm. Individual psychometric curves were carefully assessed using a three-step psychoacoustic procedure. Subjects were scanned while passively listening to the standard sound and while discriminating changes in sound intensity at four different performance levels (d' = 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5). Analysis of regional cerebral blood flow data outlined activation, during the discrimination conditions, of a right hemispheric frontoparietal network already reported in other studies of selective or sustained attention to sensory input, and in which activity appeared inversely proportional to intensity discriminability. Conversely, a right posterior temporal region included in secondary auditory cortex was activated during discrimination of sound intensity independently of performance level. These findings suggest that discrimination of sound intensity involves two different cortical networks: a supramodal right frontoparietal network responsible for allocation of sensory attentional resources, and a region of secondary auditory cortex specifically involved in sensory computation of sound intensity differences.
Topics: Adult; Cerebrovascular Circulation; Discrimination, Psychological; Humans; Loudness Perception; Male; Psychoacoustics; Tomography, Emission-Computed
PubMed: 9698330
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.18-16-06388.1998 -
Journal of Speech, Language, and... Feb 2011To develop a system for numerically quantifying a speaker's phonetic accuracy through transcription-based measures. With a focus on normal and disordered speech in...
PURPOSE
To develop a system for numerically quantifying a speaker's phonetic accuracy through transcription-based measures. With a focus on normal and disordered speech in children, the authors describe a system for differentially weighting speech sound errors on the basis of various levels of phonetic accuracy using a Weighted Speech Sound Accuracy (WSSA) score. The authors then evaluate the reliability and validity of this measure.
METHOD
Phonetic transcriptions were analyzed from several samples of child speech, including preschoolers and young adolescents with and without speech sound disorders and typically developing toddlers. The new measure of phonetic accuracy was validated against existing measures, was used to discriminate typical and disordered speech production, and was evaluated to examine sensitivity to changes in phonetic accuracy over time. Reliability between transcribers and consistency of scores among different word sets and testing points are compared.
RESULTS
Initial psychometric data indicate that WSSA scores correlate with other measures of phonetic accuracy as well as listeners' judgments of the severity of a child's speech disorder. The measure separates children with and without speech sound disorders and captures growth in phonetic accuracy in toddlers' speech over time. The measure correlates highly across transcribers, word lists, and testing points.
CONCLUSION
Results provide preliminary support for the WSSA as a valid and reliable measure of phonetic accuracy in children's speech.
Topics: Adolescent; Child; Child, Preschool; Humans; Phonetics; Psychoacoustics; Reproducibility of Results; Speech Disorders; Speech Production Measurement; Vocabulary
PubMed: 20699344
DOI: 10.1044/1092-4388(2010/10-0030) -
Journal of Visualized Experiments : JoVE Oct 2010The ability to hear is only the first step towards making sense of the range of information contained in an auditory signal. Of equal importance are the abilities to...
The ability to hear is only the first step towards making sense of the range of information contained in an auditory signal. Of equal importance are the abilities to extract and use the information encoded in the auditory signal. We refer to these as listening skills (or auditory processing AP). Deficits in these skills are associated with delayed language and literacy development, though the nature of the relevant deficits and their causal connection with these delays is hotly debated. When a child is referred to a health professional with normal hearing and unexplained difficulties in listening, or associated delays in language or literacy development, they should ideally be assessed with a combination of psychoacoustic (AP) tests, suitable for children and for use in a clinic, together with cognitive tests to measure attention, working memory, IQ, and language skills. Such a detailed examination needs to be relatively short and within the technical capability of any suitably qualified professional. Current tests for the presence of AP deficits tend to be poorly constructed and inadequately validated within the normal population. They have little or no reference to the presenting symptoms of the child, and typically include a linguistic component. Poor performance may thus reflect problems with language rather than with AP. To assist in the assessment of children with listening difficulties, pediatric audiologists need a single, standardized child-appropriate test battery based on the use of language-free stimuli. We present the IMAP test battery which was developed at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research to supplement tests currently used to investigate cases of suspected AP deficits. IMAP assesses a range of relevant auditory and cognitive skills and takes about one hour to complete. It has been standardized in 1500 normally-hearing children from across the UK, aged 6-11 years. Since its development, it has been successfully used in a number of large scale studies both in the UK and the USA. IMAP provides measures for separating out sensory from cognitive contributions to hearing. It further limits confounds due to procedural effects by presenting tests in a child-friendly game-format. Stimulus-generation, management of test protocols and control of test presentation is mediated by the IHR-STAR software platform. This provides a standardized methodology for a range of applications and ensures replicable procedures across testers. IHR-STAR provides a flexible, user-programmable environment that currently has additional applications for hearing screening, mapping cochlear implant electrodes, and academic research or teaching.
Topics: Auditory Perceptual Disorders; Child; Cognition Disorders; Humans; Psychoacoustics; Speech Discrimination Tests; User-Computer Interface
PubMed: 20972412
DOI: 10.3791/2139 -
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and... Nov 2010To determine whether phonophobia and dynamic mechanical (brush) allodynia are associated in episodic migraine (EM).
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether phonophobia and dynamic mechanical (brush) allodynia are associated in episodic migraine (EM).
METHODS
Adult patients with EM were prospectively recruited. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain demographic and migraine related data. Phonophobia was tested quantitatively using a real time sound processor and psychoacoustic software. Sound stimuli were pure tones at frequencies of 1000 Hz, 4000 Hz and 8000 Hz, delivered to both ears at increasing intensities, until an aversive level was reached. Allodynia was assessed by brushing the patient's skin with a gauze pad at different areas. Patients were tested both between and during acute attacks. Sound aversion thresholds (SATs) in allodynic and non-allodynic patients were compared.
RESULTS
Between attacks, SATs were lower in allodynic compared with non-allodynic patients, with an average difference of -5.7 dB (p=0.04). During acute attacks, the corresponding average SAT difference (allodynic-non-allodynic) was -15.7 dB (p=0.0008). There was a significant negative correlation between allodynia scores and SATs, both within and between attacks.
CONCLUSIONS
The results support an association between phonophobia and cutaneous allodynia in migraine.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Acute Disease; Adolescent; Adult; Auditory Threshold; Female; Humans; Hyperacusis; Hyperalgesia; Male; Middle Aged; Migraine with Aura; Migraine without Aura; Physical Stimulation; Psychoacoustics; Surveys and Questionnaires; Young Adult
PubMed: 20562466
DOI: 10.1136/jnnp.2009.198481 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Sep 2009Natural sounds possess characteristic statistical regularities. Recent research suggests that mammalian auditory processing maximizes information about these...
Natural sounds possess characteristic statistical regularities. Recent research suggests that mammalian auditory processing maximizes information about these regularities in its internal representation while minimizing encoding cost [Smith, E. C. and Lewicki, M. S. (2006). Nature (London) 439, 978-982]. Evidence for this "efficient coding hypothesis" comes largely from neurophysiology and theoretical modeling [Olshausen, B. A., and Field, D. (2004). Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 14, 481-487; DeWeese, M., et al. (2003). J. Neurosci. 23, 7940-7949; Klein, D. J., et al. (2003). EURASIP J. Appl. Signal Process. 7, 659-667]. The present research provides behavioral evidence for efficient coding in human auditory perception using six-channel noise-vocoded speech, which drastically limits spectral information and degrades recognition accuracy. Two experiments compared recognition accuracy of vocoder speech created using theoretically-motivated, efficient coding filterbanks derived from the statistical regularities of speech against recognition using standard cochleotopic (logarithmic) or linear filterbanks. Recognition of the speech created using efficient encoding filterbanks was significantly more accurate than either of the other classes. These findings suggest potential applications to cochlear implant design.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Humans; Linear Models; Models, Psychological; Psychoacoustics; Recognition, Psychology; Sound Spectrography; Speech; Speech Perception; Task Performance and Analysis
PubMed: 19739745
DOI: 10.1121/1.3158939 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Aug 2011In this article, we establish a new phenomenon of "inattentional deafness" and highlight the level of load on visual attention as a critical determinant of this...
In this article, we establish a new phenomenon of "inattentional deafness" and highlight the level of load on visual attention as a critical determinant of this phenomenon. In three experiments, we modified an inattentional blindness paradigm to assess inattentional deafness. Participants made either a low- or high-load visual discrimination concerning a cross shape (respectively, a discrimination of line color or of line length with a subtle length difference). A brief pure tone was presented simultaneously with the visual task display on a final trial. Failures to notice the presence of this tone (i.e., inattentional deafness) reached a rate of 79% in the high-visual-load condition, significantly more than in the low-load condition. These findings establish the phenomenon of inattentional deafness under visual load, thereby extending the load theory of attention (e.g., Lavie, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 25, 596-616, 1995) to address the cross-modal effects of visual perceptual load.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Awareness; Color Perception; Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Pitch Perception; Psychoacoustics; Reaction Time; Size Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 21611856
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-011-0144-4 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Apr 2023Physiological and psychoacoustic studies of the medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) in humans have often relied on long duration elicitors (>100 ms). This is largely...
Physiological and psychoacoustic studies of the medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) in humans have often relied on long duration elicitors (>100 ms). This is largely due to previous research using otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) that found multiple MOCR time constants, including time constants in the 100s of milliseconds, when elicited by broadband noise. However, the effect of the duration of a broadband noise elicitor on similar psychoacoustic tasks is currently unknown. The current study measured the effects of ipsilateral broadband noise elicitor duration on psychoacoustic gain reduction estimated from a forward-masking paradigm. Analysis showed that both masker type and elicitor duration were significant main effects, but no interaction was found. Gain reduction time constants were ∼46 ms for the masker present condition and ∼78 ms for the masker absent condition (ranging from ∼29 to 172 ms), both similar to the fast time constants reported in the OAE literature (70-100 ms). Maximum gain reduction was seen for elicitor durations of ∼200 ms. This is longer than the 50-ms duration which was found to produce maximum gain reduction with a tonal on-frequency elicitor. Future studies of gain reduction may use 150-200 ms broadband elicitors to maximally or near-maximally stimulate the MOCR.
Topics: Humans; Psychoacoustics; Cochlea; Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous; Reflex; Time Factors; Acoustic Stimulation; Perceptual Masking
PubMed: 37092950
DOI: 10.1121/10.0017925 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Sep 2012The relative sensitivity of human listeners to interaural level differences (ILDs) carried by the onsets, offsets, and interior portions of brief sounds was examined....
The relative sensitivity of human listeners to interaural level differences (ILDs) carried by the onsets, offsets, and interior portions of brief sounds was examined. Stimuli consisted of single 4000-Hz Gabor clicks (Gaussian-windowed tone bursts) or trains of 16 such clicks repeating at an interclick interval (ICI) of 2 or 5 ms. In separate conditions, ILDs favored the right ear by a constant amount for all clicks (condition RRRR) or a changing amount that was maximal at sound onset (condition R000), offset (condition 000R), both onset and offset (condition R00R), or at the temporal midpoint of the stimulus (condition 0RR0). ILD increases and decreases were implemented as linear decibel sweeps across four clicks to minimize transient distortion. Threshold ILDs were determined adaptively for each of these conditions and for single clicks. Thresholds were similar for ILDs presented near sound onset or offset (condition R000 vs 000R) but lower when ILDs were carried by both onset and offset clicks (condition R00R) than for ILDs carried by interior clicks alone (condition 0RR0). The results suggest that similar sensitivity to onset and offset ILD does not reflect uniform temporal weighting; instead, ILD sensitivity favors onsets and offsets over the interior portions of sounds.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Analysis of Variance; Audiometry, Pure-Tone; Auditory Pathways; Auditory Perception; Auditory Threshold; Cues; Discrimination, Psychological; Functional Laterality; Humans; Psychoacoustics; Sound Localization; Time Factors
PubMed: 22978886
DOI: 10.1121/1.4740496 -
JASA Express Letters Apr 2023A listener's judgement on the perceptual distance between two sounds usually draws on their psychoacoustic difference, but can also be subject to L1-specific perception....
A listener's judgement on the perceptual distance between two sounds usually draws on their psychoacoustic difference, but can also be subject to L1-specific perception. This study investigates the interplay between these two aspects when evaluating the perceptual distance of sound pairs. Mandarin and English listeners rated the perceptual distance of consonant-vowel pairs corresponding to sequences legal or illegal in their L1s. The results suggested that a similarity rating task can provide a finer assessment of distinctiveness between sound pairs as compared to a discrimination task. The results also showed how psychoacoustic perception may interact with L1-specific perception in this process.
Topics: Psychoacoustics; Speech Perception; Phonetics; Sound
PubMed: 37096893
DOI: 10.1121/10.0017771