Hearing and Language

Question 1

Emotional Imbalance: Misophonia

Answer 1

• Sounds which make you feel uncomfortable or angry
• Sound of people eating

Question 2

The nature of sound

Answer 2

• A sound source lets out repeated circular pressure waves
• Looks like if you were to drop a pebble into water

Question 3

Properties of a sound wave

Answer 3

• Pure tone is portrayed as a sine wave
• Sine waves show amplitude and frequency
• Amplitude = loudness
• Frequency = pitch

Question 4

How do sound waves make music

Answer 4

• Keys on a keyboard are ordered in rising frequency
• One octave is C-C which is the same tone but multiple frequency

Question 5

Combining frequencies to make harmonies

Answer 5

• If you play two frequencies at the same time, you get complex chords and
• Pure tones combined together creates musical tones

Question 6

What is noise

Answer 6

• Creates interference between all of the individual tones
• White noise is random amplitudes of frequencies

Question 7

Hearing and the Ear

Answer 7

• the ear is known as a transducer
• Outer ear, directional microphone
• Middle ear, impedance matching, overload protection
• Inner ear, frequency analysis, neural encoding
• Ears are extremely sensitive

Question 8

What is frequency Masking

Answer 8

• When a instrument has a larger frequency range as well as larger intensity, it masks another instrument which has a lower range and lower intensity
• You can measure a threshold by increasing the frequency of an instrument until you can no longer hear the other one.

Question 9

Threshold at different frequencies

Answer 9

• Measuring the threshold for a distant and close mask, you then see how the hearing profile looks at that time.
• You can then see a threshold curve
• A threshold curve is the amplitude of the masking tone in relation to the target tone for different frequencies
• Channel filter tuning is the basis for perception of pitch

Question 10

How do we measure perceived loudness

Answer 10

• can be measured by comparing different tones at different frequencies
• The intensity of the comparison tone can be adjusted until the same ‘subjective’ as the reference tone
• If you were to compare multiple frequencies you could use a curve of equal loudness
• Physical intensity (sound pressure level) is recorded as ‘perceived loudness’

Question 11

What can we hear?

Answer 11

• equal loudness contours are determined by matching the perceived intensity of tone pairs at various base intensities
• Audiograms can be used for environmental assessments i.e. how loud are the planes
• Speech is in a frequency range between 200 and 300 hz

Question 12

Ecology of sound intensity

Answer 12

• Anything around 70db should be avoided i.e. hoover
• 90db is dangerous for example Large waterfall
• 140db is pain level i.e. plain taking off
• Threshold is 0db

Question 13

What is a clinical audiogram

Answer 13

• Displays the patients hearing loss
• A single curve of threshold elevation is used for each ear

Question 14

What is the spectrum for human speech

Answer 14

• Large range of audible spectrum
• Sounds from vowels are in lower frequency ranges
• Sounds from consonants covers almost the entire range
• Telephone system loses higher frequency (technically a hearing impairment)

Question 15

What are the forms of hearing impairment?

Answer 15

• Deafness is a type of hearing impairment
  Presbycusis: type of hearing loss that occurs with age (high frequency hearing loss)
  Noise exposure: temporary hearing loss or permanent deafness
  Tinnitus: Continuous humming or ringing

Question 16

What is a sonogram

Answer 16

• To characterise sound you have to have time and frequency and the intensity information
• A Sonogram shows all this data (frequency, intensity and time)

Question 17

Why are spoken words complex

Answer 17

• Spectogram shows frequency intensity and time
• Every word has a complex pattern of frequency as well as intensity which is regulated as a function of time
• Waveform envelope (microphone)

Question 18

What are the building blocks of language

Answer 18

• First you hear a word which goes into the ‘Auditory System’. -> Auditory input
• You can then use this to create spoken language ‘Phoneme system’. -> Spoken word
• They all lead to semantic system

Question 19

Listening and Speaking

Answer 19

Broca’s area in the frontal lobe: There is speech production
Wernicke’s area in the temporal lobe: Phrases without meaning

Question 20

From natural to artificial systems

Answer 20

• Alexa and siri
• Programmed system
• Fast moving technology and development

Question 21

Sound in Space

Answer 21

• The ear is 1D.
• You have two ears so you hear where something is by the differences in two ears
• Look at time distance, the signal comes later to certain points than others which is more precise
• This is highly developed by bats

Question 22

The cocktail party effect

Answer 22

• The ability to focus on one particular sound (listen to several conversations at once)
• Easier for younger people to do this
• Cocktail party effect would mean you can’t distinguish any conversation from each other
• Conversations are masking each other
• ## Binaural unmasking, what we do to separate the voices and where the voices are coming from (direction)

Question 23

Psychology of language

Answer 23

• Many different languages in the world
• 7, 000 languages
• In the last 50 years we lost 230 languages
• Attempts to rescue languages
• Travel, communication and migration causes the death in languages
• Future, we need to be more diverse