Hearing & Speech Final!

What is Psychoacoustics?

The study of the relationship between the acoustic world and our auditory image of this world

What is Psychophysics?

The study of the relationship between the physical world and the perceptual world across all of the senses: hearing, taste, vision, smell, and touch

What is a Psychophysical threshold?

The lowest value of a stimulus that causes change in the mental state of an observer

What is Threshold?

The smallest detectable or discriminable value for eliciting a particular response (sound detection, discrimination, recognition, pain)

The auditory system is most sensitive to low-intensity sounds in the speech range, from about ____ to ______Hz

250 to 6000

What is the Dynamic range?

It’s the difference between the threshold of hearing and the threshold of pain/discomfort at any frequency

What is Difference threshold?

The smallest physical difference between two stimuli in which a listener can determine that the two stimuli are perpetually different (can discriminate between two sounds). Also called a difference limen or just noticeable difference

What are the 3 ways to measure thresholds?

1). Yes-no technique

2). N-alternative forced choice

3). Adjustment

What is the Yes-No technique?

The listener is asked to respond “yes” or “no” in response to trials (some containing signal and some not)

What is the N-Alternative Forced Choice technique?

A listener is presented with a number (n) of observation intervals. The signal is presented during only one of the intervals & the listener must indicate which of the intervals contained the signal

What is the Adjustment technique?

Listener changes a stimulus to reach some goal (until you can just barely hear it)

What is the Method of Limits?

The stimulus is gradually increased & decreased until the threshold has been reached. It uses a series of ascending & descending stimuli

What is the Method of Constant Stimuli?

Pre-selected signals are presented in random or counterbalanced order

• Threshold is the 50% response level

What is the Method of Adjustment?

A listener manually adjusts the stimuli until the stimuli meet a predetermined threshold criterion

• Threshold is calculated as the mean value of several adjustments

What is matching procedure?

Listener is given two stimuli

What is Direct scaling?

Listener hears something & is asked to give a number to one of its attributes (scale of 1 to 100, how loud is this?)

What is Pitch?

How high or low a tone sounds