In five experiments highly-proficient bilinguals were asked to name two sets of pictures in their L2: a) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have the same grammatical gender value, and b) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have different gender values. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3 Croatian-Italian speakers were asked to name the pictures in Italian by means of NPs in various experimental contexts. In Experiment 4A, Spanish-Catalan and Catalan-Spanish bilinguals were asked to name the pictures in Spanish, and in Experiment 4B, Italian-French bilinguals did so in French. The results of these experiments revealed no differences between same- and different-gender pictures. Furthermore, the performance of Italian, Spanish, and French monolingual speakers parallels that of bilingual speakers. However, a robust frequency effect was observed across experiments. This pattern of results supports the notion that the gender value of the words in the non-response language does not affect processing in the response language, and suggests that the two gender systems of a bilingual are functionally autonomous.

The authors report 3 picture-word interference experiments in which they explore some properties of the agreement process in speech production. In Experiment 1, Croatian speakers were asked to produce utterances in which the noun's gender value had an impact on the selection of gender-marked freestanding morphemes (pronouns) while ignoring the presentation of same- or different-gender distractor words. In Experiments 2 and 3, Croatian speakers were asked to name the same pictures using noun phrases in which the noun's gender value surfaced as an inflectional suffix. Different-gender distractors interfered more than same-gender distractors (the gender congruency effect) in Experiment 1, but not in Experiments 2 and 3. These contrasting results show that the cause of the gender congruency effect is not at the level where lexical-grammatical information is selected but at the level of selection of freestanding morphemes.

Frequency selectivity is a fundamental cochlear property. Recent studies using otoacoustic emissions and psychophysical forward masking suggest that frequency selectivity is sharper in human than in common laboratory species. This has been disputed based on reports using compound action potentials (CAPs), which reflect activity in the auditory nerve and can be measured in humans. Comparative data of CAPs, obtained with a variety of simultaneous masking protocols, have been interpreted to indicate similarity of frequency tuning across mammals and even birds. Unfortunately, there are several issues with the available CAP measurements which hamper a straightforward comparison across species. We investigate sharpness of CAP tuning in cat and chinchilla using a forward masking notched-noise paradigm-which is less confounded by cochlear nonlinearities than simultaneous masking paradigms and similar to what was used in the psychophysical study reporting sharper tuning in humans. Our parametric study, using different probe frequencies and notch widths, shows relationships consistent with those of auditory nerve fibers (ANFs). The sharpness of tuning, quantified by Q 10 factors, is negatively correlated with probe level and increases with probe frequency, but the Q 10 values are generally lower than the average trend for ANFs. Like the single fiber data, tuning for CAPs is sharper in cat than in chinchilla, but the two species are similar in the dependence of tuning on probe frequency and in the relationship between tuning in ANFs and CAP. Growthof-maskability functions show slopes G1 indicating that with increasing probe level the probe is more susceptible to cochlear compression than the masker. The results support the use of forward-masked CAPs as an alternative measure to estimate ANF tuning and to compare frequency tuning across species.

Electrophonic meteor sounds, heard simultaneously with the meteor appearance, are a longstanding problem due to their nonintuitive nature. Previous investigations have been undermined by lack of instrumental recordings. Here we present the first instrumental detection of electrophonic sounds obtained during the observation of 1998 Leonids from Mongolia. Two Leonid fireballs of brightness −6.5m and −12m produced short, low‐frequency sounds, which were simultaneously recorded by microphones in a special setup and heard by different observers. Simultaneous measurements of electromagnetic ELF/VLF radiation above 500 Hz did not reveal any signal correlated to the electrophonic event. The lack of signal was explained by the low frequency of electrophones. We show that physical characteristics of Leonid electrophones cannot be completely explained by existing theories and that further theoretical refinement and observational work is needed. Finally, we tentatively suggest the possibility of stronger than expected coupling of fireballs with atmospheric charge dynamics and ionosphere.

Stimulus-locked temporal codes are increasingly seen as relevant to perception. The timing of action potentials typically varies with stimulus intensity, and the invariance of temporal representations with intensity is therefore an issue. We examine the timing of action potentials in cat auditory nerve to broadband noise presented at different intensities, using an analysis inspired by coincidence detection and by the binaural "latency hypothesis." It is known that the two cues for azimuthal sound localization, interaural intensity or level differences and interaural time differences (ITDs), interact perceptually. According to the latency hypothesis, the increase in intensity for the ear nearest to a sound source off the midline causes a decrease in response latency in that ear relative to the other ear. We found that changes in intensity cause small but systematic shifts in the ongoing timing of responses in the auditory nerve, generally but not always resulting in shorter delays between stimulus onset and neural response for increasing intensity. The size of the temporal shifts depends on characteristic frequency with a pattern indicating a fine-structure and an envelope response regime. Overall, the results show that ongoing timing is remarkably stable with intensity at the most peripheral neural level. The results are not consistent in a simple way with the latency hypothesis, but because of the acute sensitivity to ITDs, the subtle effects of intensity on timing may nevertheless have perceptual consequences.

Background and Hypothesis Patients with hearing impairment (HI) may experience hearing sounds without external sources, ranging from random meaningless noises (tinnitus) to music and other auditory hallucinations (AHs) with meaningful qualities. To ensure appropriate assessment and management, clinicians need to be aware of these phenomena. However, sensory impairment studies have shown that such clinical awareness is low. Study Design An online survey was conducted investigating awareness of AHs among clinicians and their opinions about these hallucinations. Study Results In total, 125 clinicians (68.8% audiologists; 18.4% Ear-Nose-Throat [ENT] specialists) across 10 countries participated in the survey. The majority (96.8%) was at least slightly aware of AHs in HI. About 69.6% of participants reported encountering patients with AHs less than once every 6 months in their clinic. Awareness was significantly associated with clinicians’ belief that patients feel anxious about their hallucinations (β = .018, t(118) = 2.47, P < .01), their belief that clinicians should be more aware of these hallucinations (β =.018, t(118) = 2.60, P < .01), and with confidence of clinicians in their skills to assess them (β = .017, t(118) = 2.63, P < .01). Clinicians felt underequipped to treat AHs (Median = 31; U = 1838; PFDRadj < .01). Conclusions Awareness of AHs among the surveyed clinicians was high. Yet, the low frequency of encounters with hallucinating patients and their belief in music as the most commonly perceived sound suggest unreported cases. Clinicians in this study expressed a lack of confidence regarding the assessment and treatment of AHs and welcome more information.

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We employed the dual filter-bank “STEP” coder to separately control the spectral and temporal modulation resolution of analysis channels. Previously we compared vowel pitch ranking and gender classification with eight subjects using enhanced modulation at F0—including across-channel synchronised modulation to the ACE coder. There was no significant improvement using modulation enhanced coding versus ACE across subjects. In a follow-up experiment we looked at the effect of stimulation rate on voice pitch perception. Since there are large inter-subject differences in overall temporal pitch acuity we hypothesised that some subjects’ performance may be more greatly influenced by carrier rate than others, or that some subjects may find sound quality satisfactory with lower carrier rates than those in their clinical processors. We used a version of STEP with a very short temporal envelope analysis window of 2 ms which allows a very low latency real-time processing implementation and large maximum modulation bandwidth. Subjects were tested using carrier rates of 1000, 500 and 250 pps/ch with modulation bandwidths controlled via low-pass filtering. Pilot data indicated that the new low-latency coder provides very good sound quality compared to ACE using 1000 pps/ch or 500 pps/ch. Also the modulation bandwidth could be tuned at different carrier rates to optimize voice pitch perception based on temporal cues. This opens the potential for lower stimulation rates to be used in CI coding while maintaining optimal temporal resolution.