Search results for "auditory"
showing 8 items of 568 documents
Linearizing Auditory Distance Estimates by Means of Virtual Acoustics
2008
Auditory distance estimates are not linearly related to physical distances: people tend to overestimate close physical distances, and underestimate far distances [I]. We have modeled a virtual listening environment whose objective is to provide a linear relationship between perceived and physical distance. The simulated environment consists of a trapezoidal membrane with specific absorbing properties at the boundaries. A physics-based model simulates acoustic wave propagation in this virtual space and provides auditory distance cues, namely intensity and direct-to-reverberant energy ratio. Simulations predict the linearity of the psychophysical function relating physical distance to perceiv…
Decoding Musical Training from Dynamic Processing of Musical Features in the Brain
2018
AbstractPattern recognition on neural activations from naturalistic music listening has been successful at predicting neural responses of listeners from musical features, and vice versa. Inter-subject differences in the decoding accuracies have arisen partly from musical training that has widely recognized structural and functional effects on the brain. We propose and evaluate a decoding approach aimed at predicting the musicianship class of an individual listener from dynamic neural processing of musical features. Whole brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data was acquired from musicians and nonmusicians during listening of three musical pieces from different genres. Six mus…
Data from: Individual differences in selective attention predict speech identification at a cocktail party
2017
Listeners with normal hearing show considerable individual differences in speech understanding when competing speakers are present, as in a crowded restaurant. Here, we show that one source of this variance are individual differences in the ability to focus selective attention on a target stimulus in the presence of distractors. In 50 young normal-hearing listeners, the performance in tasks measuring auditory and visual selective attention was associated with sentence identification in the presence of spatially separated competing speakers. Together, the measures of selective attention explained a similar proportion of variance as the binaural sensitivity for the acoustic temporal fine stru…
Are We Really Hearing in Our Heads What We Think We’re Hearing? The Role of Audiation in Musical Improvisation
2016
An important and valued part of the skill of musical improvisation is to be able to play what we hear in our head (audiation). Improvisation is a cognitively demanding activity, involving the production of musical material in real time. This requires the simultaneous involvement and coordination of many different skills, and places demands on working memory, memory retrieval, auditory and sensory-motor systems. Some recent studies support a cognitive model of improvisation which posits the deployment of stored rhythmic and melodic patterns via motor programmes. According to the theory of event coding, actions and their perceptual consequences share the same cognitive representation and beha…
The keyboard as a part of visual, auditory and kinesthetic processing in sight-reading at the piano
2009
Sight-reading at the piano requires coordination of multiple modalities—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Visual feedback (obtained by looking at the keyboard and the fingers) is usually regarded as one means by which pianists guide musical performance, but few researchers have focused on the organisational aspects implicit in the information provided by the keyboard. This study investigated the role of the keyboard with respect to the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities involved in sight-reading. Five pianists sight-read two compositions, each in a different musical style. They were then interviewed in a semi-structured interview format. A qualitative content analysis was made fr…
The effect of singing the melody in the practice of the piano
2009
The aim of this study was to test a hypothesis that if learners created more precise auditory representation from singing a melody, they could learn piano playing to reach at a higher level of performance. Seven novice piano players of varied ages learned to play novel musical pieces with and without singing their melodies. The time period of practice sessions for learning each melody with and without singing conditions was equalized. After all practice sessions, their performances were recorded to MD. The players themselves and 13 qualified piano teachers as a third party evaluated recorded music based on preciseness of performance with the given score, naturalness of the melody, and appro…
Do Physiological Responses and Personality Traits Relate to Auditory Perceptual Learning in Musicians and Non-Musicians?
2009
Peripheral nervous system can influence learning and memory functions by increasing the activity level (‘arousal’) of the system with increasing task difficulty. Several studies show that musicians discriminate auditory stimuli more effectively both neurally and behaviourally. Yet, the effects of individual peripheral nervous responses or personality during auditory learning have not been studied in musicians. In this paper, we show preliminary evidence on physiological differences between musicians and non-musicians during auditory perceptual learning. Results suggest that musicians have higher change in skin temperature and heart rate between resting state and active auditory discriminati…
The Relationship between Auditory Imagery and Musical Synchronization Abilities in Musicians
2009
Musical ensemble performance requires precise action coordination. To maintain synchrony in the presence of expressive tempo variations, musicians presumably anticipate the sounds that will be produced by their co-performers and coordinate their own anticipated actions with these predictions. Anticipatory auditory images in pitch and time may facilitate such predictions. Two experiments were conducted to examine the contribution of different aspects of auditory imagery abilities to sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) in musicians. In Experiment 1, the acuity of single-tone pitch images was measured by an adjustment method and by adaptive threshold estimation. Different types of finger tappin…