Search results for "Loudness"
showing 10 items of 48 documents
Sequential grouping modulates the effect of non-simultaneous masking on auditory intensity resolution.
2012
The presence of non-simultaneous maskers can result in strong impairment in auditory intensity resolution relative to a condition without maskers, and causes a complex pattern of effects that is difficult to explain on the basis of peripheral processing. We suggest that the failure of selective attention to the target tones is a useful framework for understanding these effects. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the sequential grouping of the targets and the maskers into separate auditory objects facilitates selective attention and therefore reduces the masker-induced impairment in intensity resolution. In Experiment 1, a condition favoring the processing of the maskers and the targ…
Characteristics of tinnitus with or without hearing loss: Clinical observations in Sicilian tinnitus patients
2010
Objective: To analyze the clinical characteristics of tinnitus both in normal hearing subjects and in patients with hearing loss. Methods: The study considered 312 tinnitus sufferers, 176 males and 136 females, ranging from 21 to 83 years of age, who were referred to the Audiology Section of the Department of Bio-technology of Palermo University. The following parameters were considered: age, sex, hearing threshold, tinnitus laterality, tinnitus duration, tinnitus measurements and subjective disturbance caused by tinnitus. The sample was divided into two groups: Group 1 (G1) subjects with normal hearing; Group 2 (G2) subjects with hearing loss. Results: Among the patients considered, 115 ha…
Factors Influencing Tinnitus Loudness and Annoyance
2006
Objective To evaluate the 2 major components of tinnitus severity, loudness and annoyance, and their degree of dependence on characteristics of tinnitus manifestation, history, and etiology. Design Cross-sectional survey performed during the first months of 2004. Setting Nonclinical population. Participants A total of 4995 members of the German Tinnitus League. Main Outcome Measures Comprehensive screening questionnaire, including the Klockhoff and Lindblom loudness grading system and the miniversion of the Tinnitus Questionnaire. Results A moderate correlation of 0.45 was found between tinnitus loudness and annoyance. Both factors were generally higher in men, those older than 50 years, th…
DPOAE‐Grams in Patients with Acute Tonal Tinnitus
2005
To investigate cochlear outer hair cell function in patients with acute tonal tinnitus and normal or near-normal hearing threshold.Prospective controlled study in an academic tertiary health center. Distortion products of otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE)-grams of 32 ears with acute tonal tinnitus and normal hearing or minimal hearing loss were compared with those of 17 healthy nontinnitus ears.Tinnitus ears exhibited relatively increased amplitudes of DPOAE at high frequencies (4-6.3 kHz) when compared with the group of healthy ears and relatively decreased DPOAE amplitudes at middle frequencies (1650-2400 Hz). Statistically significant ( P0.01) increased mean values of DPOAE amplitudes were o…
A comparison of the temporal weighting of annoyance and loudness
2009
The influence of single temporal portions of a sound on global annoyance and loudness judgments was measured using perceptual weight analysis. The stimuli were 900-ms noise samples randomly changing in level every 100 ms. For loudness judgments, Pedersen and Ellermeier [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 123, 963-972 (2008)] found that listeners attach greater weight to the beginning and ending than to the middle of a stimulus. Qualitatively similar weights were expected for annoyance. Annoyance and loudness judgments were obtained from 12 listeners in a two-interval forced-choice task. The results demonstrated a primacy effect for the temporal weighting of both annoyance and loudness. However, a signific…
Behavioral and event-related potential distraction effects with regularly occurring auditory deviants
2007
When auditory stimulation contains infrequent task-irrelevant changes (deviants), behavioral responses to task-relevant aspects of the stimulation are prolonged. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) show that deviants elicit mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and reorienting negativity (RON). Here, we examine whether distraction effects can also be elicited within fixed auditory sequences with deviant probabilities of 0.25, 0.33, and 0.5. Deviants varied either in pitch, loudness, or sound source location. In all conditions MMN and P3a were elicited, suggesting that an automatic detection of and an attentional allocation to the change occurred. With relative frequencies of 25% and 33%, devian…
Effect of changing pulse rate on profile parameters of perceptual thresholds and loudness comfort levels and relation to ECAP thresholds in recipient…
2010
Abstract: The Nucleus CI24RE Freedom device offers higher stimulation rates and lower noise levels in action potential measurements (ECAPs) than previous devices. A study including ten European implant teams showed that the effect of changes in rate from 250 to 3500 pulses per second on tilt and curvature of the T and C profiles is insignificant. When changing rate one may change the levels at all electrodes by the same amount. Using an automated procedure ECAPs could be measured quickly and reliably at a noise level of only 1 μV. However, this did not result in improved correlations between the tilt and curvature parameters of the ECAP profiles and those of the T and C profiles. Average C …
Speech perception performance as a function of stimulus pulse rate and processing strategy preference for the Cochlear™ Nucleus®CI24RE device: Relati…
2010
Current cochlear implants can operate at high pulse rates. The effect of increasing pulse rate on speech performance is not yet clear. Habituation to low rates may affect the outcome. This paper presents the results of three subsequent studies using different experimental paradigms, applying the Nucleus CI24RE device, and conducted by ten European implant teams. Pulse rate per channel varied from 500 to 3500 pulses per second with ACE and from 1200 to 3500 pps with CIS strategy. The results showed that the first rate presented had little effect on the finally preferred rate. Lower rates were preferred. The effect of pulse rate on word scores of post-linguistic implantees was small; high rat…
Auditory distance perception in an acoustic pipe
2008
In a study of auditory distance perception, we investigated the effects of exaggeration the acoustic cue of reverberation where the intensity of sound did not vary noticeably. The set of stimuli was obtained by moving a sound source inside a 10.2-m long pipe having a 0.3-m diameter. Twelve subjects were asked to listen to a speech sound while keeping their head inside the pipe and then to estimate the egocentric distance from the sound source using a magnitude production procedure. The procedure was repeated eighteen times using six different positions of the sound source. Results show that the point at which perceived distance equals physical distance is located approximately 3.5 m away fr…
Audiovisual speech perception in children with developmental language disorder in degraded listening conditions.
2013
Purpose The effect of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on the perception of audiovisual speech in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) was investigated by varying the noise level and the sound intensity of acoustic speech. The main hypotheses were that the McGurk effect (in which incongruent visual speech alters the auditory speech percept) would be weaker for children with DLD than for controls and that it would get stronger with decreasing SNR in both groups. Method The participants were 8-year-old children with DLD and a sample of children with normal language development. In the McGurk stimuli, the consonant uttered by the voice differed from that articulated …