Differences in common psychoacoustical tasks by sex, menstrual cycle, and race

Abstract

The psychoacoustical literature contains multiple reports about small differences in performance depending upon the sex and phase of the menstrual cycle of the subjects. In an attempt to verify these past reports, a large-scale study was implemented. After extensive training, the performance of about 75 listeners was measured on seven common psychoacoustical tasks. For most tasks, the signal was a 3.0-kHz tone. The initial data analyses failed to confirm some past outcomes. Additional analyses, incorporating the limited information available about the racial background of the listeners, did confirm some of the past reports, with the direction and magnitude of the differences often diverging for the White and Non-White listeners. Sex differences and race differences interacted for six of the seven tasks studied. These interactions suggest that racial background needs to be considered when making generalizations about human auditory performance, and when considering failures of reproducibility across studies. Menstrual differences were small, but generally larger for Whites than Non-Whites. Hormonal effects may be responsible for the sex and cycle differences that do exist, and differences in intra-cochlear melanocytes may account for the race differences.

Correlations between otoacoustic emissions and performance in common psychoacoustical tasks

“…) Sex differences in psychoacoustical performance have been less well studied than sex differences in OAEs (McFadden, 1998). As reported elsewhere (McFadden et al, 2018), some of the seven psychoacoustical tasks reported here did exhibit sex differences. An unexpected outcome was that sex differences interacted with race differences for many of our tasks.…”

“…Because substantial sex differences exist for OAEs, all correlations between OAEs and psychoacoustical task were calculated within sex. Race/ethnic differences previously had been reported for various behavioral and physiological auditory measures (see discussion in McFadden et al, 2018).…”

“…OAEs were measured individually during the course of employment, multiple times for the female subjects. Here we report the correlations between various OAE and psychoacoustical measures; elsewhere we report on the basic psychoacoustical data acquired (McFadden et al, 2018). A third report is in preparation on psychoacoustical performance and auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), which also were measured in this study.…”

Are there sex effects for speech intelligibility in American English? Examining the influence of talker, listener, and methodology

“…For even arguably the most basic auditory task, audiometric thresholds for simple sinusoids, female listeners on average display lower thresholds than males by approximately 2-3 dB at some frequencies (McFadden, 1998). In addition, females display stronger click-evoked otoacoustic emissions, narrower auditory filters, and even slightly better gap detection (temporal) thresholds, whereas males display better localization, more sensitive detection of basic signals in complex maskers, and higher sensitivity in a profile-analysis task (a measure of informational masking) (McFadden, 1998;McFadden et al, 2018). Males have also been shown to display better fundamental frequency contour discrimination (McRoberts et al, 1992).…”

Postnatal Effects of Sex Hormones on Click-Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions: A Study of Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria

“…Specifically, several studies suggested that OAEs fluctuate with the menstrual cycle, peaking around ovulation when levels of estradiol are high (Al-Mana, Ceranic, Djahanbakhch, & Luxon, 2010;Bell, 1992;Haggerty, Lusted, & Morton, 1993;Penner, 1995). However, in a recent study the evidence regarding OAE fluctuation during the menstrual cycle was not supported (McFadden, Pasanen, Maloney, Leshikar, & Pho, 2018). A temporary change in OAEs might be elicited by testosterone as well; a negative relationship between seasonal variations in testosterone and emission strengths was reported in male adult monkeys (McFadden, Pasanen, Raper, Lange, & Wallen, 2006).…”