Effects of auditory enhancement on the loudness of masker and target components

Wang, Ningyuan; Oxenham, Andrew J.

doi:10.1016/j.heares.2016.01.012

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Interestingly, the precursor had no effect on the loudness of the masker components, or on the loudness of the target when it was presented on its own. However, when the target and masker were presented together, the precursor produced an increase in the perceived loudness of the target by an effective 10 dB [17], which is similar to what has been observed in masking studies.…”

Section: Mechanisms Of Auditory Enhancement Studiedsupporting

confidence: 83%

“…in Normal-hearing Listeners A recent study from our lab provided a more direct test of the adaptation of inhibition hypothesis by estimating the perceived loudness of the target and masker components in the presence and absence of the precursor [17]. Normalhearing listeners were asked to judge the loudness of these components relative to a comparison stimulus that was presented 2 seconds later.…”

Section: Mechanisms Of Auditory Enhancement Studiedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spectral contrast effects and auditory enhancement under normal and impaired hearing

Oxenham

2020

Acoust. Sci. & Tech.

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We are generally able to identify sounds and understand speech with ease, despite the large variations in the acoustics of each sound, which occur due to factors such as different talkers, background noise, and room acoustics. This form of perceptual constancy is likely to be mediated in part by the auditory system's ability to adapt to the ongoing environment or context in which sounds are presented. Auditory context effects have been studied under different names, such as spectral contrast effects in speech and auditory enhancement effects in psychoacoustics, but they share some important properties and may be mediated by similar underlying neural mechanisms. This review provides a survey of recent studies from our laboratory that investigate the mechanisms of speech spectral contrast effects and auditory enhancement in people with normal hearing, hearing loss, and cochlear implants. We argue that a better understanding of such context effects in people with normal hearing may allow us to restore some of these important effects for people with hearing loss via signal processing in hearing aids and cochlear implants, thereby potentially improving auditory and speech perception in the complex and variable everyday acoustic backgrounds that surround us.

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Section: Mechanisms Of Auditory Enhancement Studiedsupporting

confidence: 83%

Section: Mechanisms Of Auditory Enhancement Studiedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral contrast effects and auditory enhancement under normal and impaired hearing

Oxenham

2020

Acoust. Sci. & Tech.

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“…In this case, the context effects observed could be induced by the spectral troughs in the preceding sentence using the same mechanism underlying auditory enhancement, which refers to a phenomenon where a target tone can “pop out” from a surrounding simultaneous masker if the masker itself is presented first (Schouten, 1940; Viemeister, 1980). The neural responses to the spectral components that are not present in the precursor are larger, or enhanced, either through the adaption of the response to frequency components present in the masker by the same components also presented in the precursor (Viemeister, 1980) or the adaptation of inhibition of the target by the masker after the precursor (Viemeister & Bacon, 1982; Wang & Oxenham, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral contrast effects produced by competing speech contexts.

Feng¹,

Oxenham²

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The long-term spectrum of a preceding sentence can alter the perception of a following speech sound in a contrastive manner. This speech context effect contributes to our ability to extract reliable spectral characteristics of the surrounding acoustic environment and to compensate for the voice characteristics of different speakers or spectral colorations in different listening environments to maintain perceptual constancy. The extent to which such effects are mediated by low-level "automatic" processes, or require directed attention, remains unknown. This study investigated spectral context effects by measuring the effects of two competing sentences on the phoneme category boundary between /i/ and /ε/ in a following target word, while directing listeners' attention to one or the other context sentence. Spatial separation of the context sentences was achieved either by presenting them to different ears, or by presenting them to both ears but imposing an interaural time difference (ITD) between the ears. The results confirmed large context effects based on ear of presentation. Smaller effects were observed based on either ITD or attention. The results, combined with predictions from a two-stage model, suggest that ear-specific factors dominate speech context effects but that the effects can be modulated by higher-level features, such as perceived location, and by attention. (PsycINFO Database Record

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“…Given that SCE magnitude tended to be greater in regions of SNHL, it is reasonable to question how this could be pathological and detrimental to speech perception. Spectral context effects have been proposed to be a means of normalizing at least some of the extreme acoustic variability in speech (Wang & Oxenham, 2016). Without this normalization, speech perception may be more difficult and less accurate due to inappropriate processing of acoustic detail.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral contrast effects in vowel categorization by listeners with sensorineural hearing loss

Stilp

Alexander

2016

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The auditory system is highly sensitive to changes in acoustic input. This is especially true for sounds with relatively stable (reliable) spectral properties across time. Over a limited range, changes to the spectrum (e.g., spectral peak location upon introduction of a new sound) are perceptually enhanced in proportion to the property's long-term reliability, producing spectral contrast effects (SCEs). For example, a neutral vowel between /ɪ/-/ɛ/ is more likely to be labelled /ɛ/ (high-F1) when preceded by sounds with a reliable low-frequency peak in the F1 range for /ɪ/, and vice versa. Yet, it is unknown how SCEs affect speech perception by hearing-impaired (HI) listeners because research has only examined normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Here, listeners with mild-to-moderate HI identified target vowels varying from /ɪ/-/ɛ/ that followed a precursor sentence. Reliability of precursor spectral peaks was manipulated using low-F1 or high-F1 bandpass filters with +5 to +20 dB gain. SCE magnitude was proportional to precursor filter gain (like NH listeners), and surprisingly, to the amount of low-frequency hearing loss. Thus, mechanisms responsible for SCEs are not dependent on healthy hearing, and are magnified by auditory filter broadening associated with sensorineural hearing loss. Implications of these findings for speech perception will be discussed.

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Effects of auditory enhancement on the loudness of masker and target components

Cited by 15 publications

References 34 publications

Spectral contrast effects and auditory enhancement under normal and impaired hearing

Spectral contrast effects and auditory enhancement under normal and impaired hearing

Spectral contrast effects produced by competing speech contexts.

Spectral contrast effects in vowel categorization by listeners with sensorineural hearing loss

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