Robust and Efficient Online Auditory Psychophysics

Abstract

Most human auditory psychophysics research has historically been conducted in carefully controlled environments with calibrated audio equipment, and over potentially hours of repetitive testing with expert listeners. Here, we operationally define such conditions as having high ‘auditory hygiene’. From this perspective, conducting auditory psychophysical paradigms online presents a serious challenge, in that results may hinge on absolute sound presentation level, reliably estimated perceptual thresholds, low and controlled background noise levels, and sustained motivation and attention. We introduce a set of procedures that address these challenges and facilitate auditory hygiene for online auditory psychophysics. First, we establish a simple means of setting sound presentation levels. Across a set of four level-setting conditions conducted in person, we demonstrate the stability and robustness of this level setting procedure in open air and controlled settings. Second, we test participants’ tone-in-noise thresholds using widely adopted online experiment platforms and demonstrate that reliable threshold estimates can be derived online in approximately one minute of testing. Third, using these level and threshold setting procedures to establish participant-specific stimulus conditions, we show that an online implementation of the classic probe-signal paradigm can be used to demonstrate frequency-selective attention on an individual-participant basis, using a third of the trials used in recent in-lab experiments. Finally, we show how threshold and attentional measures relate to well-validated assays of online participants’ in-task motivation, fatigue, and confidence. This demonstrates the promise of online auditory psychophysics for addressing new auditory perception and neuroscience questions quickly, efficiently, and with more diverse samples. Code for the tests is publicly available through Pavlovia and Gorilla.

Absolute pitch judgments of familiar melodies generalize across timbre and octave

“…Notably, participants were pre-screened to ensure that they had met minimum performance criteria in their participation in other MTurk assignments, and participants also were required to pass attention checks throughout the experiment to be included in the main analyses. Second, a robust body of literature has been able to replicate classic auditory findings in an online setting, indicating that when executed properly, online experiments yield equally valid results-with the added benefit of being able to recruit larger, more diverse sample sizes (e.g., see Eerola et al, 2021;Zhao et al, 2022).…”

Some like it sharp: Song familiarity influences musical preference for absolute tuning.

“…Additionally, prior studies conducted by the authors (e.g., Van Hedger et al, 2017) have shown internal replications of effects in both online and in-lab samples, using similar recruitment parameters as those used in the present study. Finally, the literature asserts the benefits of online studies more broadly given that they are carefully controlled (e.g., Eerola et al, 2021; Zhao et al, 2022). As such, we would expect these general findings to replicate in an in-person, laboratory setting.…”

Effective soundscape characterisation of an acoustic metamaterial based window: A comparison between laboratory and online methods

“…The Laboratory method is characterised by constant headset setup and autocorrelation noise conditions, while, when conducting the questionnaire online, these parameters may variate slightly or strongly [21,22]. This is why the online method's robustness must be assessed to understand the degree of precision of such an alternative questionnaire method.…”