Headphone screening to facilitate web-based auditory experiments

Woods, Kevin; Siegel, Max; Traer, James; McDermott, Joshua H.

doi:10.3758/s13414-017-1361-2

Cited by 353 publications

(262 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

255

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…We demonstrated that a robust measure of perceptual salience can be obtained without substantial constraints from a web-based mass-participant experimental platform. Online experimenting is gaining popularity within cognitive science (see Stewart et al, 2017 for a review), including in the auditory modality (Woods et al, 2017;Woods and McDermott, 2018).…”

Section: Crowd-sourced Saliencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Rapid ocular responses are a robust marker for bottom-up driven auditory salience

Zhao

Yum

Benjamin

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Acknowledgements:We are grateful to Makoto Yoneya (NTT) for initiating the pupillometry setup at UCL. This work was supported by an EC Horizon 2020 grant and a BBSRC international partnering award to MC.Significance statement: Microsaccades are small, rapid, fixational eye movements, measurable with sensitive eye-tracking equipment. We reveal a novel, robust link between microsaccade dynamics and the subjective salience of brief sounds (salience ranking obtained from a large number of participants in an online experiment): Within 300 ms of sound onset, the eyes of naïve, passively listening participants demonstrate different microsaccade patterns as a function of the sound's perceptual salience. These results position the Superior Colliculus (the generator of microsaccades) as an important brain area to investigate in the context of a putative multi-modal salience-hub and establish a robust objective means for quantifying auditory salience, critical in the development of sound-based human machine interfaces. AbstractDespite the prevalent use of alerting sounds in alarms and human-machine interface systems, we have only a rudimentary understanding of what determines auditory saliencethe automatic attraction of attention by sound -and the brain mechanisms which underlie this process. A major roadblock to understanding has been the lack of a robust, objective means of quantifying sound-driven attentional capture. Here we demonstrate that microsaccade inhibitionan oculomotor response arising within 300ms of sound onset -is a robust marker for the salience of brief sounds. Specifically, we show that a 'crowd sourced' (N=911) subjective salience ranking correlated robustly with the superior colliculus (SC) mediated ocular freezing response measured in naïve, passively listening participants (replicated in two groups of N=15 each). More salient sounds evoked earlier microsaccadic inhibition, consistent with a faster orienting response. These results establish that microsaccade-indexed activity within the SC is a practical objective measure for auditory salience.

show abstract

Section: Crowd-sourced Saliencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since we were interested in the extent to which a relatively free listening environment can result in meaningful data, we did not impose constraints on sound delivery (e.g. Woods et al, 2017) or level (though it was suggested that the participants listen over headphones).…”

Section: Amazon Mechanical Turk Derived Subjective Saliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid ocular responses are a robust marker for bottom-up driven auditory salience

Zhao

Yum

Benjamin

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The noise root-mean-squared (rms) level was set to the maximum of the rms level of the experimental stimuli. Participants then completed a 'headphone check' task to help ensure that they were wearing headphones or earphones 46 . Finally, to eliminate participants who were not fully focused on the task, we included practice trails at the beginning of the experiment (described in more detail below).…”

Section: Experimental Procedures For Online Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants then performed a brief headphone check experiment [Woods et al 2017] intended to weed out participants who were ignoring the instructions to wear headphones or earphones. They next completed 20 practice trails in which they were asked to report whether they "heard the sound" or "didn't hear the sound" during the interrupting noise segment.…”

Section: Experiments 1 -Illusory Continuity For a Large Set Of Naturalmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Illusory sound texture reveals multi-second statistical completion in auditory scene analysis

McWalter

McDermott

2019

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sound sources in the world are experienced as stable even when intermittently obscured, implying perceptual completion mechanisms that "fill in" missing sensory information. We demonstrate a filling-in phenomenon in which the brain extrapolates the statistics of background sounds (textures) over periods of several seconds when they are interrupted by another sound, producing vivid percepts of illusory texture. The effect differs from previously described completion effects in that 1) the extrapolated sound must be defined statistically given the stochastic nature of texture, and 2) in lasting much longer, enabling introspection and facilitating assessment of the underlying representation. Illusory texture appeared to be integrated into texture statistic estimates indistinguishably from actual texture, suggesting that it is represented similarly to actual texture. The illusion appears to represent an inference about whether the background is likely to continue during concurrent sounds, providing a stable representation of the environment despite unstable sensory evidence.

show abstract

Navigating the Benefits and Pitfalls of Online Psychiatric Data Collection

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Behavioral and epidemiological investigators have moved toward gathering online data in recent months. The number of PubMed search hits for online data collection has exploded in 2021 compared with the yearly number of search hits for the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. Online data collection opens up great opportunities to inexpensively gather large amounts of data in short periods of time. However, it also leaves researchers susceptible to malingering and fraud, which have been shown to be common in some settings. 1 Psychiatric research may be especially susceptible to fraud and poor data quality in these settings because of its reliance on behavior and subjective reports of symptomatology. Here, we offer a perspective on strategies to maximize the benefits of online data collection while minimizing attendant risks.Without geographic limitations, researchers are able to avail themselves of a pool of participants potentially located far away from research hubs, strengthening representation of rural groups, preventing potential generalizability problems that come with repeated participation of small groups of individuals, and enhancing a greater understanding of experiences across racial and ethnic backgrounds and differences in care across these groups. Online data collection can also be far less taxing on resources than in-person data collection. Adequate recruitment and data collection from large samples can take many years. When collecting online data, the tasks of scheduling and meeting with participants are moot, and participants can perform research-related tasks at any time of day with little to no assistance from investigators, freeing staff to focus on other tasks.Despite its conveniences, however, online data collection is not without risks. Data collection without appropriate safeguards can lead to poor or unknown data quality. Fortunately, simple, low-cost strategies for data quality control can significantly mitigate this risk.Risk mitigation starts with recruitment. Online platforms can certainly attract attention to a study, but also allow access by individuals who may offer inaccurate information to either maximize the likelihood of meeting inclusion criteria or minimize the time expended on studies because their primary motivation may be financial compensation. Engaging existing networks may offer a safer alternative, particularly if those networks offer clinical support, social support, or other specialized services; in essence, the more specialized the group, the less likely it will have been discovered by individuals outside of the target population who might be driven to feign group membership and accompanying symptoms. Anecdotally, our recent study showed a marked uptick in numbers of fraudulent or repeated participation on broad engagement with social media, whereas

show abstract

Headphone screening to facilitate web-based auditory experiments

Cited by 353 publications

References 23 publications

Rapid ocular responses are a robust marker for bottom-up driven auditory salience

Rapid ocular responses are a robust marker for bottom-up driven auditory salience

Illusory sound texture reveals multi-second statistical completion in auditory scene analysis

Navigating the Benefits and Pitfalls of Online Psychiatric Data Collection

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About