An online headphone screening test based on dichotic pitch

Milne, Alice E.; Bianco, Roberta; Poole, Katarina C.; Zhao, Sijia; Oxenham, Andrew J.; Billig, Alexander J.; Chait, Maria

doi:10.3758/s13428-020-01514-0

Cited by 128 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Although we asked participants to perform the experiment in a quiet environment and to avoid distractions, Internet testing made it difficult to control for external noise or potential interruptions, which remain a major challenge for online testing in general, and for auditory research in particular. Moreover, we did not include a task to ensure that participants used headphones (Milne et al, 2020;Woods et al, 2017). Although we strongly recommended that they used them throughout the experiment, it was not possible to verify whether they did or not.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite these benefits, online testing needs specific exclusion criteria, careful experimental designs, and appropriate motivational strategies (e.g., feedback) to ensure that participants complete all of the tasks and to maximize control (e.g., Gosling et al, 2004). Auditory research, and temporally based experimental tasks in general, can be particularly challenging, because compared to the laboratory, online testing occurs in contexts that are more variable and uncontrolled in terms of noise, technical aspects of stimulus presentation, and potential interruptions (e.g., Milne et al, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Can Musical Ability be Tested Online?

Correia¹,

Vincenzi²,

Vanzella³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We sought to determine whether an objective test of musical ability could be administered online successfully. A sample of 754 participants was tested with an online version of the Musical Ear Test (MET), which had Melody and Rhythm subtests. Both subtests had 52 trials, each of which required participants to determine whether standard and comparison auditory sequences were identical. The testing session also included the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI), a test of general cognitive ability, and self-report questionnaires that measured basic demographics (age, education, gender), mind wandering, and personality. Approximately 20% of the participants were excluded for incomplete responding or failing to finish the testing session. For the final sample (N = 608), findings were similar to those from in-person testing in many respects: (1) the internal reliability of the MET was maintained, (2) construct validity was confirmed by strong associations with Gold-MSI scores, (3) correlations with other measures (e.g., openness-to-experience, cognitive ability, mind wandering) were as predicted, (4) for individuals with no music training, mean levels of performance were similar, and (5) musical sophistication was a better predictor of performance on the Melody compared to the Rhythm subtest. In sum, online administration of the MET proved to be a reliable and valid way to measure musical ability.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Musical Ability be Tested Online?

Correia¹,

Vincenzi²,

Vanzella³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Further research could control for this variability by an in-depth characterization of exposure conditions such as ambient sounds, headphone type, lighting, and psychosomatic factors during the introductory session with the participant. Another complementary way would be to incorporate automated controls such as for example headphone screening tests (Woods et al, 2017;Milne et al, 2020), a gold standard (Nelson and Allen, 2019) and background level recordings (Murphy and King, 2016). In future research, we plan to use a portable, custom-made sensor system that we developed to automatically track breathing cycles which allows to free the cognitive resources required to manually indicate breathing onsets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Breathing Sonification System to Reduce Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Kerrebroeck

Maes

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Since sound and music are powerful forces and drivers of human behavior and physiology, we propose the use of sonification to activate healthy breathing patterns in participants to induce relaxation. Sonification is often used in the context of biofeedback as it can represent an informational, non-invasive and real-time stimulus to monitor, motivate or modify human behavior. The first goal of this study is the proposal and evaluation of a distance-based biofeedback system using a tempo- and phase-aligned sonification strategy to adapt breathing patterns and induce states of relaxation. A second goal is the evaluation of several sonification stimuli on 18 participants that were recruited online and of which we analyzed psychometric and behavioral data using, respectively questionnaires and respiration rate and ratio. Sonification stimuli consisted of filtered noise mimicking a breathing sound, nature environmental sounds and a musical phrase. Preliminary results indicated the nature stimulus as most pleasant and as leading to the most prominent decrease of respiration rate. The noise sonification had the most beneficial effect on respiration ratio. While further research is needed to generalize these findings, this study and its methodological underpinnings suggest the potential of the proposed biofeedback system to perform ecologically valid experiments at participants' homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“…28,29 Since free-field interference disrupts this interaural phase offset, screening tasks based on Huggins' pitch are highly selective for participants who are using headphones. 30 On each trial, three binaural noise stimuli were presented sequentially, one of which contained a Huggins' pitch stimulus. Participants made a 3AFC judgment about which interval contained the "hidden tone.…”

Section: Screening and Pre-experiments Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial alignment between faces and voices improves selective attention to audio-visual speech

Fleming

Maddox

Shinn‐Cunningham

2021

Preprint

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The ability to see a talker's face has long been known to improve speech intelligibility in noise. This perceptual benefit depends on approximate temporal alignment between the auditory and visual speech components. However, the practical role that cross-modal spatial alignment plays in integrating audio-visual (AV) speech remains unresolved, particularly when competing talkers are present. In a series of online experiments, we investigated the importance of spatial alignment between corresponding faces and voices using a paradigm that featured both acoustic masking (speech-shaped noise) and attentional demands from a competing talker. Participants selectively attended a Target Talker's speech, then identified a word spoken by the Target Talker. In Exp. 1, we found improved task performance when the talkers' faces were visible, but only when corresponding faces and voices were presented in the same hemifield (spatially aligned). In Exp. 2, we tested for possible influences of eye position on this result. In auditory-only conditions, directing gaze toward the distractor voice reduced performance as predicted, but this effect could not fully explain the cost of AV spatial misalignment. Finally, in Exp. 3 and 4, we show that the effect of AV spatial alignment changes with noise level, but this was limited by a floor effect: due to the use of closed-set stimuli, participants were able to perform the task relatively well using lipreading alone. However, comparison between the results of Exp. 1 and Exp. 3 suggests that the cost of AV misalignment is larger at high noise levels. Overall, these results indicate that spatial alignment between corresponding faces and voices is important for AV speech integration in attentionally demanding communication settings.

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An online headphone screening test based on dichotic pitch

Cited by 128 publications

References 21 publications

Can Musical Ability be Tested Online?

Can Musical Ability be Tested Online?

A Breathing Sonification System to Reduce Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Spatial alignment between faces and voices improves selective attention to audio-visual speech

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