Narrow-band ripple glide direction discrimination and its relationship to frequency selectivity estimated using psychophysical tuning curves

Narne, Vijaya Kumar; Jain, Saransh; Sharma, Chitkala; Baer, Thomas; Moore, Brian C. J.

doi:10.1016/j.heares.2020.107910

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Impaired spectral modulation sensitivity with a cochlear implant is a likely result of its band-pass filtering mechanism that limits the spectral information to a set number of spectral bands. Henry et al (2005), Berenstein et al (2008) and Narne et al (2020) all found lower spectral ripple modulation thresholds for cochlear-implant users compared to normal-hearing listeners, roughly corresponding to the increased reaction times in our study. Spectral modulation thresholds in hearing-impaired listeners have been reported to be 5–10 dB worse than for normal hearing (Davies-Venn et al, 2015; Summers & Leek, 1994), which may agree with the longer reaction times of our hearing-aid simulation compared to normal hearing.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

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Reaction Time Sensitivity to Spectrotemporal Modulations of Sound

2022

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We tested whether sensitivity to acoustic spectrotemporal modulations can be observed from reaction times for normal-hearing and impaired-hearing conditions. In a manual reaction-time task, normal-hearing listeners had to detect the onset of a ripple (with density between 0–8 cycles/octave and a fixed modulation depth of 50%), that moved up or down the log-frequency axis at constant velocity (between 0–64 Hz), in an otherwise-unmodulated broadband white-noise. Spectral and temporal modulations elicited band-pass filtered sensitivity characteristics, with fastest detection rates around 1 cycle/oct and 32 Hz for normal-hearing conditions. These results closely resemble data from other studies that typically used the modulation-depth threshold as a sensitivity criterion. To simulate hearing-impairment, stimuli were processed with a 6-channel cochlear-implant vocoder, and a hearing-aid simulation that introduced separate spectral smearing and low-pass filtering. Reaction times were always much slower compared to normal hearing, especially for the highest spectral densities. Binaural performance was predicted well by the benchmark race model of binaural independence, which models statistical facilitation of independent monaural channels. For the impaired-hearing simulations this implied a “best-of-both-worlds” principle in which the listeners relied on the hearing-aid ear to detect spectral modulations, and on the cochlear-implant ear for temporal-modulation detection. Although singular-value decomposition indicated that the joint spectrotemporal sensitivity matrix could be largely reconstructed from independent temporal and spectral sensitivity functions, in line with time-spectrum separability, a substantial inseparable spectral-temporal interaction was present in all hearing conditions. These results suggest that the reaction-time task yields a valid and effective objective measure of acoustic spectrotemporal-modulation sensitivity.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

“…Narne et al (2016, 2018, 2020) have studied spectral resolution by means of a spectral-ripple or a moving-ripple test. They found thresholds around 5 to 6 cycles/octave for normal-hearing listeners in optimal conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reaction Time Sensitivity to Spectrotemporal Modulations of Sound

2022

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“…Yet, as a cautionary note, we point out that the question of spectral/temporal separability must be addressed with additional experiments specifically targeting this issue, because the engagement (or lack thereof) of relevant mechanisms likely depends on task demands. For example, a model with separable spectral and temporal processes, or simply based on the variance of modulations across peripheral channels (Chabot-Leclerc et al., 2014), would not explain why listeners are able to discriminate upward versus downward STMs (Archer-Boyd et al., 2018; Denham, 2005; Narne et al., 2020), as it would return the same output for the two directions. Particular attention should be devoted to this question in future studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, as pointed out by the authors (see Miller et al, 2018), several distinct mechanisms might be conflated by these measurements: broader cochlear filters due to hearing loss as well as deficits related to other processes (that were not engaged with pure tones), such as temporal fine structure (TFS) processing. In relation to the former aspect, some recent studies go as far as suggesting that upward/downward STM discrimination thresholds could serve as a proxy measure for auditory filter bandwidth (BW; Narne et al, 2019Narne et al, , 2020. In addition, it is important to note that these studies have examined factors that limit the ability of HI listeners to detect modulations at threshold, but these factors may differ from those recruited when extracting suprathreshold STMs from modulation noise, such as in the context of Oetjen and Verhey's (2015) masking paradigm.…”

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confidence: 99%

Mechanisms of Spectrotemporal Modulation Detection for Normal- and Hearing-Impaired Listeners

et al. 2021

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Spectrotemporal modulations (STM) are essential features of speech signals that make them intelligible. While their encoding has been widely investigated in neurophysiology, we still lack a full understanding of how STMs are processed at the behavioral level and how cochlear hearing loss impacts this processing. Here, we introduce a novel methodological framework based on psychophysical reverse correlation deployed in the modulation space to characterize the mechanisms underlying STM detection in noise. We derive perceptual filters for young normal-hearing and older hearing-impaired individuals performing a detection task of an elementary target STM (a given product of temporal and spectral modulations) embedded in other masking STMs. Analyzed with computational tools, our data show that both groups rely on a comparable linear (band-pass)–nonlinear processing cascade, which can be well accounted for by a temporal modulation filter bank model combined with cross-correlation against the target representation. Our results also suggest that the modulation mistuning observed for the hearing-impaired group results primarily from broader cochlear filters. Yet, we find idiosyncratic behaviors that cannot be captured by cochlear tuning alone, highlighting the need to consider variability originating from additional mechanisms. Overall, this integrated experimental-computational approach offers a principled way to assess suprathreshold processing distortions in each individual and could thus be used to further investigate interindividual differences in speech intelligibility.

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“…If high ripple-density resolution occurs due to the discrimination of combination-product spectra, such masking should reduce the resolution characteristic of discrimination between rippled and nonrippled signals to that characteristic of discrimination between two rippled signals. A masking pink noise in the frequency band of expected low-frequency combination products was used by Narne et al. (2020) , although comparison of masking effects depending on discrimination task was not made in that study.…”

Section: Combination Products As Possible Mechanisms Of Ripple Pattern Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Ripple-Density Resolution for Discriminating Between Rippled and Nonrippled Signals: Effect of Temporal Processing or Combination Products?

et al. 2021

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The goal of the study was to investigate the role of combination products in the higher ripple-density resolution estimates obtained by discrimination between a spectrally rippled and a nonrippled noise signal than that obtained by discrimination between two rippled signals. To attain this goal, a noise band was used to mask the frequency band of expected low-frequency combination products. A three-alternative forced-choice procedure with adaptive ripple-density variation was used. The mean background (unmasked) ripple-density resolution was 9.8 ripples/oct for rippled reference signals and 21.8 ripples/oct for nonrippled reference signals. Low-frequency maskers reduced the ripple-density resolution. For masker levels from −10 to 10 dB re. signal, the ripple-density resolution for nonrippled reference signals was approximately twice as high as that for rippled reference signals. At a masker level as high as 20 dB re. signal, the ripple-density resolution decreased in both discrimination tasks. This result leads to the conclusion that low-frequency combination products are not responsible for the task-dependent difference in ripple-density resolution estimates.

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Narrow-band ripple glide direction discrimination and its relationship to frequency selectivity estimated using psychophysical tuning curves

Abstract: Discrimination of narrowband spectral ripples 1 1 Narrow-band ripple glide direction discrimination and its relationship to frequency 2 selectivity estimated using psychophysical tuning curves 3 4 Vijaya Kumar Narne a) 1

Cited by 8 publications

References 45 publications

Reaction Time Sensitivity to Spectrotemporal Modulations of Sound

Reaction Time Sensitivity to Spectrotemporal Modulations of Sound

Mechanisms of Spectrotemporal Modulation Detection for Normal- and Hearing-Impaired Listeners

High Ripple-Density Resolution for Discriminating Between Rippled and Nonrippled Signals: Effect of Temporal Processing or Combination Products?

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