Cuing mechanisms in auditory signal detection

Detection of auditory signals under frequency uncertainty can be improved by presenting cues to the listeners. Since various cues have been found to differ in effectiveness, three conceivable mechanisms were considered which might account for these differences. Cuing might reduce the number and/or width of the employed auditory filters or listening bands. Also, cues could modulate the precision of frequency tuning of the filters. Psychometric functions were collected in a detection experiment with frequency uncertainty employing three kinds of cues: pure tones whose frequency was identical to that of the signal (iconic cues), complex tones with a missing fundamental equal to the signal (complex cues), and pure tones with a certain frequency relation to the signal (relative cues). Compared with a no-cue condition, all cue types improved detection performance. Fitting models to the data suggests that in the no-cue condition as well as the complex-cue condition, multiple bands were utilized, and that the iconic and relative cues induced single-band listening. There is no indication that accuracy of frequency tuning was responsible for cue-efficiency differences

A recency effect in sound localization?

In a free-field pointing task, listeners localized trains of 4–32 spatially distributed Gabor clicks (narrowband impulses) centered at 4-kHz carrier frequency and repeating at an interval of 5 ms. Multiple regression coefficients estimated the perceptual “weight” applied to each click in a train during location judgments. Temporal weighting functions obtained in this way exhibited two key features: onset dominance, as evidenced by high weight on the initial click, and “upweighting” of late-arriving sound, as evidenced by weights that gradually increased over the duration of each click-train. Across all tested click-train durations, and despite randomly varying the durations from trial to trial, the greatest post-onset weights were consistently found for clicks at or near the offset. The results imply a special importance of late-arriving sound rather than feedforward recovery from onset dominance, and are broadly consistent with recency effects resulting from temporal integration

Pitch discrimination interference: The role of ear of entry and of octave similarity

Gockel et al. [(2004). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 1092–1104] reported that discrimination of the fundamental frequency (F0) of two sequentially presented complex tones (the target) was impaired when an additional complex tone (the interferer) was presented simultaneously with and to the same ear as the target, even though the target and interferer were filtered into separate frequency regions. This pitch discrimination interference (PDI) was greatest when the target and interferer had similar F0s. The current study examined the role of relative ear of entry of the target and interferer and whether the dependence of the PDI effect on the relative F0 of target and interferer is based on pitch height (F0 as such) or pitch chroma (the musical note). Sensitivity (d′) was measured for discrimination of the F0 of a target with a nominal F0 of 88 Hz, bandpass filtered from 1375 to 1875 Hz. The interferer was bandpass filtered from 125 to 625 Hz. The contralateral interferer produced marked PDI, but smaller than for ipsilateral presentation. PDI was not larger when the interferer’s F0 was twice the nominal target F0 than when it was a factor of 1.9 or 2.1 higher

Failure of the precedence effect with a noise-band vocoder

The precedence effect (PE) describes the ability to localize a direct, leading sound correctly when its delayed copy (lag) is present, though not separately audible. The relative contribution of binaural cues in the temporal fine structure (TFS) of lead–lag signals was compared to that of interaural level differences (ILDs) and interaural time differences (ITDs) carried in the envelope. In a localization dominance paradigm participants indicated the spatial location of lead–lag stimuli processed with a binaural noise-band vocoder whose noise carriers introduced random TFS. The PE appeared for noise bursts of 10 ms duration, indicating dominance of envelope information. However, for three test words the PE often failed even at short lead–lag delays, producing two images, one toward the lead and one toward the lag. When interaural correlation in the carrier was increased, the images appeared more centered, but often remained split. Although previous studies suggest dominance of TFS cues, no image is lateralized in accord with the ITD in the TFS. An interpretation in the context of auditory scene analysis is proposed: By replacing the TFS with that of noise the auditory system loses the ability to fuse lead and lag into one object, and thus to show the PE

Listening Into 2030 Workshop: An Experiment in Envisioning the Future of Hearing and Communication Science

Here we report the methods and output of a workshop examining possible futures of speech and hearing science out to 2030. Using a design thinking approach, a range of human-centered problems in communication were identified that could provide the motivation for a wide range of research. Nine main research programs were distilled and are summarized: (a) measuring brain and other physiological parameters, (b) auditory and multimodal displays of information, (c) auditory scene analysis, (d) enabling and understanding shared auditory virtual spaces, (e) holistic approaches to health management and hearing impairment, (f) universal access to evolving and individualized technologies, (g) biological intervention for hearing dysfunction, (h) understanding the psychosocial interactions with technology and other humans as mediated by technology, and (i) the impact of changing models of security and privacy. The design thinking approach attempted to link the judged level of importance of different research areas to the “end in mind” through empathy for the real-life problems embodied in the personas created during the workshop

Listening Into 2030 Workshop: An Experiment in Envisioning the Future of Hearing and Communication Science

Here we report the methods and output of a workshop examining possible futures of speech and hearing science out to 2030. Using a design thinking approach, a range of human-centered problems in communication were identified that could provide the motivation for a wide range of research. Nine main research programs were distilled and are summarized: (a) measuring brain and other physiological parameters, (b) auditory and multimodal displays of information, (c) auditory scene analysis, (d) enabling and understanding shared auditory virtual spaces, (e) holistic approaches to health management and hearing impairment, (f) universal access to evolving and individualized technologies, (g) biological intervention for hearing dysfunction, (h) understanding the psychosocial interactions with technology and other humans as mediated by technology, and (i) the impact of changing models of security and privacy. The design thinking approach attempted to link the judged level of importance of different research areas to the “end in mind” through empathy for the real-life problems embodied in the personas created during the workshop