Quiz 9 Flashcards
Friday November 8 - Wednesday November 20
What are the parts of the outer ear?
Tympanic membrane
What are the parts of the middle ear?
Malleus, incus, staples
What are the parts of the inner ear?
Semicircular canals, cochlea, auditory tube
What two parts make up the basilar membrane?
Base (near the outer cochlea):
Narrower, thicker, stiffer
Apex (near the end of the cochlea):
Wider, thinner, more flexible
What sounds are optimized in the base and apex?
Base: rapid oscillations, higher frequency sounds
Apex: slower oscillations, low frequency sounds
Where do high frequencies peak compared to low frequencies?
High frequencies: near the base
Low frequencies: near the apex
What is intensity?
The loudness of a sound as experienced is proportional to the amount of energy present
Depends on amplitude and frequency
What is sound pressure?
Sound pressure is the variation in air pressure (or another medium) caused by a sound wave.
It involves alternating compression and rarefaction of particles, which our ears perceive as sound
Measured as Pa or μPa
What is the reference value for sound pressure in hearing?
P0 = 20 μPa
(20 micropascals)
What is sound intensity?
The power carried by sound waves per unit area in a direction perpendicular to that area
Measured as w/m2
What is the threshold for human hearing in sound intensity?
I0 = 10−12 W/m2
What unit do you use to measure acoustic intensity?
dB SPL
What are sones?
Measure perceived loudness
What does just noticeable difference refer to?
The smallest difference that can be detected
What does the notch in the equal loudness scale represent?
Notch at 4000Hz displays noise induced hearing loss
What are some properties of a Hertz scale?
Linear frequency scale
Equal distances represent acoustic differences in terms of physical parameters
What are some properties of the Bark scale?
Psychoacoustic scale
Equal differences represent equal distances in perception
How is acoustic information mapped?
Linguistic categories
Language users have to know what information fits into which categories (language specific)
What is the signal to noise ratio (SNR)?
ratio of signal speech to noise
0 dB SNR: amplitude of speech = amplitude of noise; they are of same loudness
6 dB SNR: speech is 6 dB louder than noise
What is multi-dimensional scaling (MDS)?
Used to interpret similarities between sounds
The closer the phonemes appear on the scale, the more similar/confusable they are
What is sound wave speech?
Mimics actual formants
Resembles a spectrogram
What was McGowan’s speech perception experiment?
Wanted to see if social information affects speech comprehension
Used Mandarin accented English and played sentences with one of 3 images; Mandarin looking, white person, and no image
What were the findings of McGowan’s experiment?
People had an easier time comprehending the speech when it was accompanied by an image of a Mandarin
What is the F1 frequency in Hz and dedicated cochlea space?
300-1000Hz (range of 700Hz)
6.84mm
