The salience of enhanced components within inharmonic complexes

Byrne, Andrew; Stellmack, Mark A.; Viemeister, Neal F.

doi:10.1121/1.4820897

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The maximal enhancement observed in Experiment 1 was over 24 dB on average, which is much larger than the 5–10 dB enhancement typically reported in many two-interval tasks if the sound intensity of maskers, precursor duration and gap duration are comparable (Viemeister, 1980). The size of enhancement in our study is comparable with that found by Byrne et al (2013) where participants reported the “pop-out” of the target tone, although the authors proposed that the larger enhancement was due to the reduction of informational masking. Indeed, in the no-precursor condition in our study, the individual thresholds varied from −10 dB to 29 dB TMR.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…A study by Carcagno et al (2012) showed different time courses for ipsilateral and contralateral enhancement: enhancement decayed more rapidly for ipsilateral precursors, again suggesting multiple sources for enhancement. Different task designs and stimulus parameters could engage different sources, which might explain some of the discrepancy in the findings of previous studies, such as the effect of perceptual similarity between precursor and masker (Byrne et al., 2013; Carcagno et al, 2013; Carlyon, 1989; Summerfield et al, 1987; Viemeister et al, 2013) or the enhancement from a contralateral precursor (Carlyon, 1989; Erviti et al, 2011; Kidd et al, 2011; Richards et al., 2004; Summerfield et al, 1984; Viemeister, 1980). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Supra-threshold effects have also been noted; for instance, enhancement can increase the effective level of a target tone monaurally, such that it affects the lateralized percept produced by combining the target with a contralateral tone at the same frequency and phase (Byrne et al, 2011). In addition, the enhanced target tone can be salient enough to be perceived as a separate entity with a distinct pitch (Byrne, Stellmack, & Viemeister, 2013; Demany, Carcagno, & Semal, 2013; Erviti, Semal, & Demany, 2011; Hartmann & Goupell, 2006). Similar effects have been observed with artificial speech stimuli, where spectral gaps in a broadband harmonic precursor at frequencies corresponding to the first three formants of a vowel can lead to the enhancement of those frequencies, and the perception of the vowel, in a subsequent harmonic complex with a flat spectral envelope (Summerfield, Haggard, Foster, & Gray, 1984; Summerfield, Sidwell, & Nelson, 1987; Thibodeau, 1991; Wang, Kreft, & Oxenham, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in their paradigm the enhancement effect was measured in terms of changes in sensitivity ( d' ), rather than the effective level of the stimulus, making direct comparisons with earlier studies of auditory enhancement difficult, and leaving open the question of the amount of enhancement in terms of effective level change. Byrne et al (2013) also used a one-interval task and roved frequencies in a paradigm that involved participants judging whether the target tone “stood out” from the remainder of the complex. By repeating the task at multiple target levels, relative to the surrounding masker tones, they were able to calculate the effective amount of enhancement produced by a precursor.…”

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confidence: 99%

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New perspectives on the measurement and time course of auditory enhancement.

Feng¹,

Oxenham²

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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A target sound can become more audible and may ‘pop out’ from a simultaneously presented masker if the masker is presented first by itself, as a precursor. This phenomenon, known as auditory enhancement, may reflect the general perceptual principle of contrast enhancement, which facilitates adaptation to ongoing acoustic conditions and the detection of new events. Little is known about the mechanisms underlying enhancement, and potential confounding factors have made the size of the effect and its time course a point of contention. Here we measured enhancement as a function of precursor duration and delay between precursor offset and target onset, using two single-interval pitch comparison tasks, which involve either same-different or up-down judgments, to avoid the potential confounds of earlier studies. Although these two tasks elicit different levels of performance and may reflect different underlying mechanisms, they produced similar amounts of enhancement. The effect decreased with decreasing precursor duration, but remained present for precursors as short as 62.5 milliseconds, and decreased with increasing gap between the precursor and target, but remained measurable 1 second after the precursor. Additional conditions, examining the effect of precursor/masker similarity and the possible role of grouping and cueing, suggest multiple sources of auditory enhancement.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

New perspectives on the measurement and time course of auditory enhancement.

Feng¹,

Oxenham²

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When the masker and target are later presented, the response to the target is enhanced since it is subjected to less suppression/inhibition. Recent findings have suggested that sensory mechanisms may be insufficient to fully account for the enhancement effect (e.g., Byrne et al, 2013). Rather, the benefit of the precursor may partially occur because it provides knowledge about the spectral content of the masker (Neff and Green, 1987; Richards and Neff, 2004; Richards et al, 2004; Kidd et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory sequential accumulation of spectral information

Shen

2017

Hearing Research

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In many listening situations, information about the spectral content of a target sound may be distributed over time, and estimating the target spectrum requires efficient sequential processing. Listeners’ ability to estimate the spectrum of a random-frequency, six-tone complex was investigated and the spectral content of the complex was revealed using a sequence of bursts. Whether each of the six tones was presented within each burst was determined at random according to a presentation probability. In separate conditions, the presentation probabilities (p) ranged from 0.2 to 1, the total number of bursts varied from 1 to 16, and the inter-burst interval was either 0 or 200 ms. To evaluate the information acquired by the listener, the burst sequence was followed, after a 500-ms silent interval, by the six-tone complex acting as an informational masker and the listener was required to detect a pure-tone target presented simultaneously with the masker. Greater performance in this task indicates more accurate estimation of the spectrum of the complex by the listener. Evidence for integration of information across bursts was observed, and the integration process did not significantly depend on inter-burst interval.

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The Auditory Enhancement Effect is Not Reflected in the 80-Hz Auditory Steady-State Response

Carcagno

Plack

Portron

et al. 2014

JARO

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The perceptual salience of a target tone presented in a multitone background is increased by the presentation of a precursor sound consisting of the multitone background alone. It has been proposed that this "enhancement" phenomenon results from an effective amplification of the neural response to the target tone. In this study, we tested this hypothesis in humans, by comparing the auditory steady-state response (ASSR) to a target tone that was enhanced by a precursor sound with the ASSR to a target tone that was not enhanced. In order to record neural responses originating in the brainstem, the ASSR was elicited by amplitude modulating the target tone at a frequency close to 80 Hz. The results did not show evidence of an amplified neural response to enhanced tones. In a control condition, we measured the ASSR to a target tone that, instead of being perceptually enhanced by a precursor sound, was acoustically increased in level. This level increase matched the magnitude of enhancement estimated psychophysically with a forward masking paradigm in a previous experimental phase. We found that the ASSR to the tone acoustically increased in level was significantly greater than the ASSR to the tone enhanced by the precursor sound. Overall, our results suggest that the enhancement effect cannot be explained by an amplified neural response at the level of the brainstem. However, an alternative possibility is that brainstem neurons with enhanced responses do not contribute to the scalp-recorded ASSR.

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The salience of enhanced components within inharmonic complexes

Cited by 14 publications

References 15 publications

New perspectives on the measurement and time course of auditory enhancement.

New perspectives on the measurement and time course of auditory enhancement.

Auditory sequential accumulation of spectral information

The Auditory Enhancement Effect is Not Reflected in the 80-Hz Auditory Steady-State Response

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