A Method for Assessing Auditory Spatial Analysis in Reverberant Multitalker Environments

Weller, Tobias; Best, Virginia; Buchholz, Jörg M.; Young, Taegan

doi:10.3766/jaaa.15109

Cited by 17 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Consistent with previous auditory enumeration studies (Kawashima & Sato, 2015;Weller et al, 2016;Zhong & Yost, 2017), we found that between three and four auditory objects could be enumerated with 50% accuracy. This was true when enumerating both spatially separated concurrent auditory objects in Experiments 1 and 2, and temporally separated sequential auditory objects in Experiment 3.…”

Section: Accurate (>50%) Auditory Enumeration Is Limited To Three To supporting

confidence: 91%

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Can auditory objects be subitized?

Roberts

Doherty

Maylor

et al. 2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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In vision, humans have the ability to mentally 'tag' approximately four objects, allowing us to monitor, attend, and interact with them. As a consequence, we can rapidly and accurately enumerate up to four objectsa process known as subitizing. Here, we investigate whether a similar ability exists for tagging auditory stimuli and find that only two or three auditory stimuli can be enumerated with high accuracy. We assess whether this high accuracy indicates the existence of an auditory subitizing mechanism, and if it is influenced by factors known to influence visual subitizing. Based on accuracy, Experiments 1 and 2 reveal a potential auditory subitizing mechanism only when stimuli are spatially separated, as is the case for visual subitizing. Experiment 3 failed to show any evidence of auditory subitizing when objects were separated in time, rather than space. All three experiments provide only limited evidence for an age-related decline in auditory enumeration of small numbers of objects. This suggests that poor auditory tagging does not contribute significantly to older adults' difficulties in multi-talker conversations. We hypothesize that although auditory subitizing might occur, it is restricted to approximately two spatially-separated objects due to the difficulty of parsing the auditory scene into its constituent parts.

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Section: Accurate (>50%) Auditory Enumeration Is Limited To Three To supporting

confidence: 91%

“…For example, Weller et al (2016) presented stimuli for up to 45 seconds and still found that normally-hearing listeners could only accurately identify up to four auditory sources.…”

Section: Accurate (>50%) Auditory Enumeration Is Limited To Three To mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can auditory objects be subitized?

Roberts

Doherty

Maylor

et al. 2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Localization of sounds in space is computationally challenging, particularly given the effects of reverberation in natural settings (Keating and King, 2015; Traer and McDermott, 2016), and likely relies on different underlying mechanisms than stream segregation (Snyder and Elhilali, 2017). The dissociation between utilization of spatial cues for the purpose of stream segregation and determining their specific spatial location is also supported by behavioral findings demonstrating increased sensitivity and discriminability for spatially segregated sounds, albeit with poor ability to report the spatial location of the target (Klatt et al, 2018; Middlebrooks, 2013; Weller et al, 2016). In other words, determining that two inputs originate from different locations is possible even when their exact location cannot be reliably discerned.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

The Role of Spatial Separation on Selective and Distributed Attention to Speech

Pinto

Agmon

2020

Preprint

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Processing speech in multi-speaker environments poses substantial challenges to the human perceptual and attention system. Moreover, different contexts may require employing different listening strategies. For instance, in some cases individuals pay attention Selectively to one speaker and attempt to ignore all other task-irrelevant sounds, whereas other contexts may require listeners to Distribute their attention among several speakers. Spatial and spectral acoustic cues both play an important role in assisting listeners to segregate concurrent speakers. However, how these cues interact with varying demands for allocating top-down attention is less clear. In the current study, we test and compare how spatial cues are utilized to benefit performance on these different types of attentional tasks. To this end, participants listened to a concoction of two or four speakers, presented either as emanating from different locations in space or with no spatial separation. In separate trials, participants were required to employ different listening strategies, and detect a target-word spoken either by one pre-defined speaker (Selective Attention) or spoken by any of the speakers (Distributed Attention). Results indicate that the presence of spatial cues improved performance, particularly in the two-speaker condition, which is in line with the important role of spatial cues in stream segregation. However, spatial cues provided similar benefits to performance under Selective and Distributed attention. This pattern suggests that despite the advantage of spatial cues for stream segregation, they were nonetheless insufficient for directing a more focused ‘attentional spotlight’ towards the location of a designated speaker in the Selective attention condition.

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“…Moreover, the applied tasks need to be more realistic, address more cognitive processes, and provide visual cues as well as context information. For instance, speech comprehension may be measured by asking subjects to answer questions while listening to monologues or dialogues in a noisy environment (e.g., Best, Streeter, Roverud, Mason, & Kidd, 2016); and localization in quiet may be replaced by measures of auditory spatial awareness (e.g., Brungart, Cohen, Cord, Zion, & Kalluri, 2014 ; Weller, Buchholz, & Best, 2016 ). Finally, to draw stronger conclusions about the investigated processes within the implanted ears, the statistical power needs to be improved by applying more subjects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilateral Versus Unilateral Cochlear Implantation in Adult Listeners: Speech-On-Speech Masking and Multitalker Localization

et al. 2017

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Binaural hearing helps normal-hearing listeners localize sound sources and understand speech in noise. However, it is not fully understood how far this is the case for bilateral cochlear implant (CI) users. To determine the potential benefits of bilateral over unilateral CIs, speech comprehension thresholds (SCTs) were measured in seven Japanese bilateral CI recipients using Helen test sentences (translated into Japanese) in a two-talker speech interferer presented from the front (co-located with the target speech), ipsilateral to the first-implanted ear (at +90° or −90°), and spatially symmetric at ±90°. Spatial release from masking was calculated as the difference between co-located and spatially separated SCTs. Localization was assessed in the horizontal plane by presenting either male or female speech or both simultaneously. All measurements were performed bilaterally and unilaterally (with the first implanted ear) inside a loudspeaker array. Both SCTs and spatial release from masking were improved with bilateral CIs, demonstrating mean bilateral benefits of 7.5 dB in spatially asymmetric and 3 dB in spatially symmetric speech mixture. Localization performance varied strongly between subjects but was clearly improved with bilateral over unilateral CIs with the mean localization error reduced by 27°. Surprisingly, adding a second talker had only a negligible effect on localization.

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A Method for Assessing Auditory Spatial Analysis in Reverberant Multitalker Environments

Cited by 17 publications

References 29 publications

Can auditory objects be subitized?

Can auditory objects be subitized?

The Role of Spatial Separation on Selective and Distributed Attention to Speech

Bilateral Versus Unilateral Cochlear Implantation in Adult Listeners: Speech-On-Speech Masking and Multitalker Localization

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