PSYCHOACOUSTICS: Object listening, auditory scene analysis, and listening in noise

Question 1

What is the cocktail party effect in speech perception?

Answer 1

The cocktail party effect describes the natural ability of individuals with normal hearing to discern and attend to different voices or sounds in noisy environments without consciously focusing or turning their heads. However, this task is notably difficult for individuals with hearing impairments.

Question 2

How can individuals compensate for challenges in speech perception?

Answer 2

Compensation options for those with hearing impairments include strategies like lip-reading and employing specific hearing tactics.

However, there’s an urgent need to enhance current hearing device technologies to improve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for people with hearing impairments.

Question 2

What is the importance of understanding speech perception in challenging environments?

Answer 2

Understanding how individuals process complex acoustic features and organize them into distinct auditory objects forms the basis of listening in acoustically challenging scenarios like cocktail parties.

This understanding is crucial for developing effective hearing technologies and requires ongoing exploration, highlighting the need for more research in the field.

Question 3

what is auditory scene analysis?

Answer 3

Auditory stream segregation isa perceptual process by which the human auditory system groups sounds from different sources into perceptually meaningful elements(e.g., a voice or a melody).

Question 4

What auditory skills do you use when listening in a cocktail party?

Answer 4

-auditory scene analysis
-Stream segregation
-Dip-listening & better ear listening
-Pitch-based stream segregation
-Sound localization & binaural unmasking

Question 5

what is meant by ‘the picket fence effect with speech?

Answer 5

also known as ‘dip-listening’, ‘listening in the gaps’, or ‘glimpsing’

Dip-listening often occurs in speech perception in amplitude modulated noise (noise energy fluctuates over time). People recognize speech by using the information in the temporal gaps when signal-to-noise ratio is high and favorable.

Question 6

what are the Gestalt principles?

Answer 6

state that objects are likely to be grouped together if:

-Proximity: when objects placed together, the eye perceives them as a group

• Similarity: when objects look similar to one another, the eye perceives them as a group or pattern
• Continuance: the ye is compelled to move from one object through another
• Closure: when an object is incomplete or not completely enclosed
• Figure and ground: When the eye differentiates an object from its surrounding area.

Question 7

What are some principles involved in Sequential Integration in auditory scene analysis?

Answer 7

• Proximity in pitch
• Proximity in time
• Similarity of timbre/quality
• Spatial location (not = ear of input)
• Good continuation: smooth contour, connectedness
• Common fate
• Pitch range

Question 7

What are some principles involved in Spectral/Simultaneous Integration
in auditory scene analysis?

Answer 7

• Harmonicity
• Common variation (onset synchrony, freq. modulation)

Question 8

What factors contribute to the competition between sequential and simultaneous integration in auditory scene analysis?

Answer 8

• Apparent continuity
• Capturing effects