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PubMed1991

Detection of silent temporal gaps in sinusoidal markers.

Gap detection thresholds were measured by forced-choice procedure for conditions where the duration of a silent gap was varied adaptively between pairs of sinusoidal markers of the same or different frequency. Frequencies of the first sinusoid in a pair of markers ranged from F1 = 500 to 4000 Hz. Second-sinusoid marker frequencies F2 included F1 = F2, and usually frequencies 2%, 5%, 24%, and 50% higher than F1. In preliminary studies the role of presentation level (E/N0) on gap detection was considered. Preliminary data revealed confounding extraneous factors arising from gating transients and from overall stimulus (i.e., markers + gap) and/or masker duration cues. In the main experiments, the contributions of these extraneous cues were evaluated with experimental designs aimed at identifying and minimizing the confounding roles of these cues in gap detection. For conditions where extraneous gating transient cues were minimized (by presenting the sinusoidal markers in a continuous noise masker with random onset phase for the second sinusoid in every pair of markers) and overall stimulus duration cues were diminished (by randomizing the duration of each marker independently), gap detection thresholds increased from 5 to 90 ms as the frequency separation between F1 and F2 was increased by half an octave. When the gap detection thresholds were treated as filter attenuation values by normalizing and converting the data into decibels, the data were closely fit by the roex filter model. On average, the listeners' performances were modeled well by a constant-percentage (7%) bandwidth filter centered on F1.

Attention↗
PubMed2005

Can dichotic pitches form two streams?

The phenomenon of auditory streaming reflects the perceptual organization of sounds over time. A series of "A" and "B" tones, presented in a repeating "ABA-ABA" sequence, may be perceived as one "galloping" stream or as two separate streams, depending on the presentation rate and the A-B frequency separation. The present experiment examined whether streaming occurs for sequences of "Huggins pitches," for which the percepts of pitch are derived from the binaural processing of a sharp transition in interaural phase in an otherwise diotic noise. Ten-second "ABA" sequences were presented to eight normal-hearing listeners for two types of stimuli: Huggins-pitch stimuli with interaural phase transitions centered on frequencies between 400 and 800 Hz, or partially-masked diotic tones-in-noise, acting as controls. Listeners indicated, throughout the sequence, the number of streams perceived. The results showed that, for both Huggins-pitch stimuli and tones-in-noise, two streams were often reported. In both cases, the amount of streaming built up over time, and depended on the frequency separation between the A and B tones. These results provide evidence that streaming can occur between stimuli whose pitch percept is derived binaurally. They are inconsistent with models of streaming based solely on differences in the monaural excitation pattern.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1983

Lateralization based on interaural phase differences: effects of frequency, amplitude, duration, and shape of rise/decay.

Experiments in lateralization were performed to evaluate the relative contribution of envelope and phase cues in binaural hearing with particular reference to the effects of frequency, amplitude, shape of rise/decay, and duration of peak amplitude. Pure-tone signals were presented with interaural phase shifts ranging between 90 degrees and 360 degrees. For a given value of phase shift, the leading signal was presented randomly to the right or left ear over a block of 100 trials, and the laterality of the resultant image was judged. Rise/decay time was varied from 5 to 200 ms across blocks. The results confirmed our previous finding that a rise/decay time of at least 200 ms is required to secure a psychophysically steady-state signal. This value will, however, depend on the values chosen for the other signal parameters. Within limits, decreasing intensity could be compensated for by decreasing rise/decay, suggesting the psychophysical importance of the initial segment of the signal (precedence effect). For low frequencies of 650 to 1250 Hz, performance is sensitive to interaural phase shift and largely independent of frequency. For higher frequencies of 1500 and 2000 Hz, lateralization is independent of the phase cue and also largely insensitive to change in rise/decay time. Finally, performance remains unchanged with variation in peak duration ranging from 25 to 200 ms.

Dominance, Cerebral↗
PubMed1984

Profile analysis: critical bands and duration.

The detection of an increment in the intensity of the central component of a multi-component complex was measured as a function of the frequency spacing of the components and the duration of the presentation. The overall intensity of the complex was randomly varied on each presentation of the stimulus. Curiously, the increment becomes easier to hear as the range and density of the surrounding complex is increased. This increase in range and density is also effective in improving the detectability of the increment when there is no random variation in intensity, i.e., a conventional Weber fraction experiment. This is unlike the results obtained in many other critical-band experiments where energy remote from the signal frequency has little or no effect. Measurement of the effects of signal duration showed that when presentations were shorter than about 100 msec a greater increment in intensity was required than for longer durations. These results with duration are similar to those obtained in other intensity-discrimination tasks.

Discrimination Learning↗
PubMed1984

Amplitude modulation thresholds in chinchillas with high-frequency hearing loss.

Estimates of auditory temporal resolution were obtained from normal chinchillas using sinusoidally amplitude modulated noise. Afterwards, the animals were exposed to noise whose bandwidth was progressively increased toward the low frequencies in octave steps. The first exposure was to an octave band of noise centered at 8 kHz. Three additional octave bands of noise were subsequently added to the original exposure in order to progressively increase the extent of the high-frequency hearing loss. The first exposure produced a temporary hearing loss of 50 to 60 dB near 8 kHz and elevated the amplitude modulation thresholds primarily at intermediate (128 Hz) modulation frequencies. Successive noise exposures extended the temporary hearing loss toward lower frequencies, but there was little further deterioration in the amplitude modulation function until the last exposure when the hearing loss spread to 1 kHz. The degradation in the amplitude modulation function observed after the last exposure, however, was due to a reduction in the sensation level of the test signal rather than to a decrease in the hearing bandwidth. The results of this study suggest that the high-frequency regions of the cochlea may be important for temporal resolution.

Animals↗
PubMed1984

Interaural intensity discrimination: insensitivity at 1000 Hz.

Recent data from three laboratories have replicated Mills' [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 32, 132-134 (1960)] finding that interaural intensity discrimination is relatively poorer for tones of 1000 Hz than for tones of either higher or lower frequencies. To get a finer look at this frequency effect, interaural intensity difference thresholds were obtained from four subjects for tones of several frequencies around 1000 Hz. An adaptive two-interval forced-choice procedure was employed, in which the overall intensity of the signals was varied randomly in order to prevent subjects from listening to monaural loudness changes. Despite large intersubject differences in overall sensitivity to interaural intensity differences, all four subjects showed a local peak in their threshold functions at or near 1000 Hz. This curious "1000-Hz effect" might be explained by imagining that an interaural intensity comparator operates more efficiently as frequency increases, but that a peripheral interaural intensity difference to interaural-time difference conversion contributes to laterality judgments for low-frequency tones, thus acting to lower thresholds again for frequencies below 1000 Hz.

Auditory Threshold↗
PubMed1984

Discrimination of dynamic interaural intensity differences.

An experiment was conducted to measure observers' ability to detect time-varying interaural intensity differences (IIDs). In a two-interval forced-choice task, observers discriminated a binaural amplitude modulated (AM) noise in which the modulating sinusoid was interaurally in-phase from the same AM noise in which the modulator was interaurally phase-reversed. The latter stimulus produces a sinusoidally varying IID whose rate and peak IID depend on the frequency (fm) and depth (m) of modulation. The carrier was a narrow-band noise, interaurally uncorrelated, centered at 500, 1000, or 4000 Hz. Presentation level was 75 dB SPL; duration was 1.0 s. For a given fm, m was varied in an adaptive procedure to estimate the depth required for 71% discriminability (mthr). Three of the four observers displayed "low-pass" modulation functions: at 500 Hz, as fm increased from 0-50 Hz, mthr increased from 0.08 (IID = 1.3 dB) to 0.50 (peak IID = 9.5 dB). At 1000 and 4000 Hz observers were more sensitive to IID and the functions (mthr vs fm) were flatter than at 500 Hz. Comparison of these data to previously published data indicates that the binaural system can follow fluctuations in IID more efficiently than it can follow fluctuations in interaural time difference, although there are large individual differences in subjects' capacity to process these two types of binaural cues.

Auditory Threshold↗
PubMed1985

Steps in loudness summation.

The dependence of binaural loudness summation on interaural phase of tones ranging between 250 and 1400 Hz was investigated in a series of experiments using a loudness-matching procedure. Observers matched loudness of monaural-binaural and binaural-binaural pairs of alternating tones by adjusting the amplitude of one of the two. Adjustable and reference components of each tone pair were equal in frequency and were varied independently in interaural phase angle through the range +/- 177 degrees. For each tone frequency, steps in loudness summation of approximately 3 dB were obtained in the vicinity of a constant value of phase angle, theta t, which depends on the Hornbostel-Wertheimer constant (tau H) according to the relations theta t = 2 pi f tau H for tones of low frequency (f less than or equal to 1/2 tau H), and theta t = 2 pi(1 - f tau H) for tones of higher frequency (1/2 tau H less than or equal to f less than or equal to 1/tau H). Spatial relationships among alternating tones observed in the above conditions covaried with relative loudness in a complex manner, but exhibited qualitative changes in the vicinity of theta t.

Dominance, Cerebral↗
PubMed1985

Auditory profile analysis: frequency, phase, and Weber's law.

This paper reports three separate experiments on different aspects of performance in auditory profile analysis. The first experiment deals with the effects of the frequency and position of an increment in a single component of a multitonal complex. The general results indicate that detection of the signal is easier for components in the mid-frequency range (around 1000 Hz) independent of signal position within the complex. The second experiment investigates the effects of relative phase of the individual components of the complex. Regardless of the number of components, our results indicate that phase has very little effect, even when different phases are selected for each presentation. The third experiment compares the detection of an increment in intensity of a single component, the traditional Weber fraction experiment, and conditions where additional components are present, a profile experiment. The detection of the increment is measured as a function of the level of the standard. The single-tone condition shows the usual near miss to Weber's law whereas the multitone condition does not. In addition, threshold for the increment is better for the multitone condition than for the single tone condition for levels of the standard up to 70 dB SPL. This last result is investigated for ten observers, five of whom were experienced in profile tasks and five of whom were not. Using a low level standard, the five experienced observers replicate the results described above. The inexperienced observers show the opposite result. On average, they are better able to detect the increment in the single-component condition.

Auditory Threshold↗
PubMed1985

Development of absolute thresholds in chickens.

Absolute auditory thresholds were estimated in chickens at 0 and 4 days after hatching. Momentary suppressions of the chicks' regular peeping, following the onset of a tone, were used as indications of stimulus detection. In the first experiment a staircase procedure was used to estimate thresholds. The absolute thresholds of both ages were the same at low frequencies (250-500 Hz), but at higher frequencies (1-2 kHz) 4-day-old chicks had lower thresholds than the 0-day-old chicks. The estimates of thresholds at 1 kHz were corroborated in the second experiment with a method of constant stimuli. A more efficient modified method of limits was used to replicate the age by frequency interaction in the third experiment. These changing thresholds are likely to reflect a developmental process somewhere in the auditory system and not some nonsensory artifact for two reasons: similar thresholds at low frequencies show that developmental differences are not due to differences in the sensitivity of the testing procedure at the two ages and thresholds obtained from the 4-day-old birds are similar to estimates from mature birds. In conclusion, responsiveness to low frequencies develops before responsiveness to higher frequencies, showing that the development of absolute thresholds is correlated with other measures of functional maturation in the auditory system.

Aging↗
PubMed1985

Central factors in the discrimination and identification of complex sounds.

The paper by Jesteadt and Norton [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 78, 365-374 (1985)] described certain similarities between psychophysical and physiological measures of frequency selectivity. Although the hearing of naturally occurring sounds is dependent upon these peripherally based relationships, recent research has shown that other, more central, processes are also strongly involved in the perception of complex acoustic events. The present paper describes research on the discrimination of complex sounds other than those of speech or music. In contrast to the more peripherally determined limits on the listener's sensitivity for single tones and other simple stimuli, the processing of complex sounds requires the interaction of peripheral and central mechanisms. These issues are discussed in relation to recent studies of the responses of the cochlea to speech stimuli. It is suggested that the peripheral processor may be relatively transparent to the essential spectral-temporal properties of speech, whereas more central processing severely limits the rates and amount of information that can be extracted from complex sounds.

Attention↗
PubMed1986

Development of auditory-evoked potentials in the cat. III. Wave amplitudes.

Amplitudes of auditory-evoked brain stem response (ABR) and late-occurring auditory-evoked potential (AER) components were recorded from kittens between birth and 90 postnatal days. All ABR and AER wave amplitudes increased during the first postnatal month. Wave amplitudes exhibited nonmonotonic growth with increasing age, attaining a maximum at 40-60 days of age, after which amplitudes decreased. Amplitudes of waves originating in the auditory nerve matured somewhat faster than waves originating in the brain stem and forebrain, and the order in which waves reached maturity was roughly the reverse order of the latencies of their peaks. Input-output curves for ABR and AER waves displayed nonmonotonic behavior that varied as a function of postnatal age. Wave amplitudes recorded from adult cats increased between threshold and 70 dB SPL, then decreased between 70 and 100 dB SPL, and rapidly increased above 100 dB SPL. The intensity corresponding to the change from increasing to decreasing amplitudes was higher for younger animals and achieved adult values during the first postnatal month.

Aging↗
PubMed1987

Tone-burst-evoked otoacoustic emissions from normal-hearing subjects.

Tone-burst-evoked otoacoustic emissions were measured as a function of tone-burst sound pressure level and frequency in normally hearing ears. Although the spectral and temporal properties varied across individual ears, there was a close correspondence between stimulus and response spectra. Both the spectral and latency characteristics of tone-burst-evoked emissions are consistent with the hypothesis that they are generated at sites along the cochlear partition corresponding to their frequency.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1988

Dichotic fusion of two tones one octave apart: evidence for internal octave templates.

Stimuli consisting of two simultaneous and sinusoidally frequency-modulated pure tones were dichotically presented to four listeners. Two component tones of each stimulus were approximately an octave apart. They were both modulated at 2 Hz, and the frequency swing resulting from each modulation corresponded to one tenth of the carrier frequency. The listeners' task was to detect phase differences between the modulation waveforms of the two simultaneous tones: With an adaptive 2IFC procedure, just-noticeable values of phi, the phase angle of the modulation waveforms, were measured as a function of the interval formed by the carrier frequencies (one octave, i.e., 1200 cents, +/- 0, 25, 50, or 100 cents). When the carrier frequencies were not too high, just-noticeable values of phi often varied nonmonotonically with the interval, showing a minimum at or near 1200 cents. An additional experiment indicated that most, if not all, of these octave effects were not due to some form of beat detection. As a whole, the results reported here provide evidence for the existence of internal octave templates. Such templates might play an important role in the perceptual segregation of simultaneous harmonic signals, as well as in pitch perception.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1991

The effects of external- and middle-ear filtering on auditory threshold and noise-induced hearing loss.

A model of external- and middle-ear function is described that uses existing data to quantify the flow of sound power from the environment to the cochlea of humans, cats, and chinchillas. This model estimates the sound power produced at the entrance of the cochlea by an environmental sound stimulus, and can be used to predict the shape of the auditory threshold function and the relative potency of various traumatic acoustic stimuli. The shapes of the predicted and measured threshold functions in the three species are similar in best frequency, bandwidth, and low-frequency slope, and the model accurately predicts the hypersensitivity of the middle-frequency regions of the cochlea to acoustic trauma. The model assumes that the mechanics of the middle-ear system are linear even at high stimulus levels and does not include the effects of either middle-ear or cochlear efferent loops. The effects of these simplifications on the model are discussed as are the implications of the model results for hearing protection and damage risk criteria.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

The structural and functional consequences of acoustic injury in the cochlea and peripheral auditory system: a five year update.

This presentation considers important developments and new trends related to acoustic injury in the peripheral auditory system reported during the past 5 years. The discussion begins with the effect overstimulation has on the "active" cochlear process, and the associated loss in receptive field (tuning curve) selectivity. Exposure to intense sound also changes the structure and function of the tectorial membrane, sensory hair bundles, tip links, and intracellular organelles. All of these injuries may change the way in which energy is delivered to the transduction channels of the hair cell. Important new evidence describing the quantitative relation between hair cell loss and permanent hearing loss is reviewed, and the possibility that specific exposure conditions cause unique lesions to the inner or outer hair cells is explored. Finally, the importance of hair cell regeneration in the chick cochlea, changes in the CNS following acoustic injury, and the cochlear vascular system are considered.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

Temporal integration and multiple looks.

The decrease in detection and discrimination thresholds with increases in signal duration has often been taken to indicate that a process of relatively long-term temporal integration occurs in hearing. Two experiments are reported that suggest that no such process occurs. The first experiment is similar to the two-pulse experiment reported by Zwislocki [J. Zwislocki, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 32, 1046-1059 (1960)] in which the threshold in quiet for a pair of brief pulses is measured as a function of the temporal separation between them. Our data indicate that power integration occurs only for separations less than approximately 5 ms. For separations larger than 5-10 ms, thresholds do not change with separation and the pulses appear to be processed independently. In the second experiment, brief 1-kHz tone pulses separated by 100 ms are presented during gaps in a wideband noise. The threshold for a pair of pulses is lower than that for either pulse presented alone, indicating that some type of "integration" occurs. However, the threshold for the pulse pair is not affected by changes in the level of the noise during the interval between the pulses. These data are inconsistent with the classical view of temporal integration that involves long-term integration. They are consistent with the notion that the input is sampled at a fairly high rate and that these samples or "looks" are stored in memory and can be accessed and processed selectively. This multiple-look model can account for the data from the present experiment and also can account for the data on temporal integration for tones and noise.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Attention↗
PubMed1992

An auditory psychometric function from newborn chicks.

This study shows how the hearing of newborn chicks can be quantified with receiver operating characteristics (ROCs). A detailed auditory psychometric function was constructed from areas under ROCs, derived from delays in ongoing vocalizations elicited by pulsing pure tones. Over 20,000 delays were analyzed from 160 birds tested at four frequencies (0.25-2 kHz), eight intensities (-3 to 18 dB above estimated threshold), and two ages (0 and 4 days posthatch). Areas under these ROCs increase in an S-shaped function over intensity, as expected. Maximum responsiveness at approximately 75% correct shows that these neonates never achieve the near-perfect performance of mature listeners. Thresholds appear best estimated by the level required for 65% correct. Results replicate previous findings, showing that thresholds mature at low frequencies before high. Although there is no simple way to alleviate decreasing responsiveness caused by habituation over trials, improved performance results from presenting different frequencies, but only in the younger birds, and primarily with louder stimuli.

Animals↗