Mechanistic Aspects of Hearing

Abstract

Despite the ear's physical complexity, its performance may be described in terms of a set of simple analyzers. Considerable work on the analogous properties of the ear has already been presented by Fletcher and Munson, among others. Work on the analysis of transients leads to equations permitting further extension of the earlier work. Experiments requiring a subject to make quantitative estimates of magnitude indicate the sensory behavior of the ear. Experiments yielding the limits of a subject's discrimination are likely to lead to a mechanistic analog. (This work is supported by the Office of Naval Research.)

Interaction of Competing Speech Signals With Hearing Losses

“…The procedures and instru¬ mentation described by Carhart3 were used except that the test words were presented at sensation levels of +24 db and intelligibility was measured at effective primary-to-sec¬ ondary ratios of -5. 6 -Interference functions for monaural direct and monaural Indirect listening by six subjects with sensorineural loss and fair discrimination in quiet who were exposed to competing speech in a sound field. -Interference functions for monaural direct listening by 11 subjects with sensorineural loss and good discrimination in quiet (group 1) and by 11 with poor discrimination (group 2), who were exposed to competing speech in a sound field.…”

“…Functions for the two groups labeled "Previous Study (N-12)" have not been plotted earlier in this paper. The other functions come fromFig 3,5,and 6 respectively.…”

Masking produced by sinusoids of slowly changing frequency

“…An important feature of many current models for detection (Corliss, 1967;Green and Swets, 1966;Henning, 1967;Jeffress, 1968;McGill, 1967) is a linear bandpass filter which is assumed to be positioned at the frequency of the signal to be detected. The response of the filter is monitored by a system which incorporates some nonlinear element and often an integrating or smoothing aspect.…”

The role of the bandwidth-duration product WT in the detectability of diotic signals

“…Gabor gave a credible basis for studying hearing in terms of instantaneous time-frequency analysis, where the acoustical uncertainty principle defined the resolution. Corliss (1963Corliss ( , 1967) applied Gabor's findings in a simple mechanistic model of hearing, based on a threshold system, where she specified an explicit relationship between the uncertainty principle and the energy resolution of the ear.…”