Using a staircase procedure for the objective measurement of auditory stream integration and segregation thresholds

Spielmann, Mona Isabel; Schröger, Erich; Kotz, Sonja A.; Pechmann, Thomas; Bendixen, Alexandra

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00534

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Two main approaches are typically pursued to study ASA (Bregman, 1990 ; Micheyl and Oxenham, 2010a ; Spielmann et al, 2013 ). Participants can be asked explicitly how they perceived a given auditory scene; in particular, whether they heard one or two sound sources at each particular moment ( subjective-report procedure ).…”

Section: Methodological Aspects Of Measuring Auditory Scene Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictability effects in auditory scene analysis: a review

Bendixen

2014

Front. Neurosci.

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Many sound sources emit signals in a predictable manner. The idea that predictability can be exploited to support the segregation of one source's signal emissions from the overlapping signals of other sources has been expressed for a long time. Yet experimental evidence for a strong role of predictability within auditory scene analysis (ASA) has been scarce. Recently, there has been an upsurge in experimental and theoretical work on this topic resulting from fundamental changes in our perspective on how the brain extracts predictability from series of sensory events. Based on effortless predictive processing in the auditory system, it becomes more plausible that predictability would be available as a cue for sound source decomposition. In the present contribution, empirical evidence for such a role of predictability in ASA will be reviewed. It will be shown that predictability affects ASA both when it is present in the sound source of interest (perceptual foreground) and when it is present in other sound sources that the listener wishes to ignore (perceptual background). First evidence pointing toward age-related impairments in the latter capacity will be addressed. Moreover, it will be illustrated how effects of predictability can be shown by means of objective listening tests as well as by subjective report procedures, with the latter approach typically exploiting the multi-stable nature of auditory perception. Critical aspects of study design will be delineated to ensure that predictability effects can be unambiguously interpreted. Possible mechanisms for a functional role of predictability within ASA will be discussed, and an analogy with the old-plus-new heuristic for grouping simultaneous acoustic signals will be suggested.

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Section: Methodological Aspects Of Measuring Auditory Scene Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictability effects in auditory scene analysis: a review

Bendixen

2014

Front. Neurosci.

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110

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“…For instance, accumulating work shows that the passively elicited mismatch negativity (MMN), a change-evoked brain response generated by infrequent “deviant” events embedded in a stream of repeating standard events ( Näätänen, 1992 ), is not affected by concurrent attentional load (e.g., Alho, Woods, Algazi, & Näätänen, 1992 ; Bendixen & Schröger, 2008 ; Chait, Ruff, Griffiths, & McAlpine, 2012 ; Dyson, Alain, & He, 2005 ; Muller-Gass, Macdonald, Schröger, Sculthorpe, & Campbell, 2007 ; Muller-Gass, Stelmack, & Campbell, 2006 ; Näätänen, Paavilainen, Rinne, & Alho, 2007 ; Restuccia, Della Marca, Marra, Rubino, & Valeriani, 2005 ; SanMiguel, Corral, & Escera, 2008 ; Sculthorpe, Collin, & Campbell, 2008 ; Sussman, 2007 ; Sussman, Winkler, & Wang, 2003 ; Woods, Alho, & Algazi, 1992 ; but see Alain & Izenberg, 2003 ; Haroush, Hochstein, & Deouell, 2010 ; Spielmann, Schröger, Kotz, Pechmann, & Bendixen, 2013 ; Woldorff & Hillyard, 1991 ; Zhang, Chen, Yuan, Zhang, & He, 2006 ). These findings have led to the commonly held view that the mechanisms responsible for the detection of oddball events (events that differ from the preceding context on some acoustic dimension) in the auditory scene are generally independent of attention.…”

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Sound segregation via embedded repetition is robust to inattention.

Masutomi

Barascud

Kashino

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The segregation of sound sources from the mixture of sounds that enters the ear is a core capacity of human hearing, but the extent to which this process is dependent on attention remains unclear. This study investigated the effect of attention on the ability to segregate sounds via repetition. We utilized a dual task design in which stimuli to be segregated were presented along with stimuli for a “decoy” task that required continuous monitoring. The task to assess segregation presented a target sound 10 times in a row, each time concurrent with a different distractor sound. McDermott, Wrobleski, and Oxenham (2011) demonstrated that repetition causes the target sound to be segregated from the distractors. Segregation was queried by asking listeners whether a subsequent probe sound was identical to the target. A control task presented similar stimuli but probed discrimination without engaging segregation processes. We present results from 3 different decoy tasks: a visual multiple object tracking task, a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) digit encoding task, and a demanding auditory monitoring task. Load was manipulated by using high- and low-demand versions of each decoy task. The data provide converging evidence of a small effect of attention that is nonspecific, in that it affected the segregation and control tasks to a similar extent. In all cases, segregation performance remained high despite the presence of a concurrent, objectively demanding decoy task. The results suggest that repetition-based segregation is robust to inattention.

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“…Some previous studies have inferred integration or segregation using measures sensitive to stimulus manipulations that also affect perceptual organization, such as the mismatch negativity ( Sussman et al, 1999 ; Winkler et al, 2006 ; Carlyon et al, 2010 ) or performance on a deviant detection task ( Carlyon et al, 2010 ; Micheyl and Oxenham, 2010 ; Billig et al, 2013 ; Spielmann et al, 2014 ). However, such measures are influenced by additional factors ( Divenyi and Danner, 1977 ; Spielmann et al, 2013 , 2014 ; Szalárdy et al, 2013b ; Sussman et al, 2014 ) and the degree to which they, in isolation, can provide a reliable indication of perceptual organization over the course of sustained bistable stimulation is unclear.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Decoding of Bistable Sounds Reveals an Effect of Intention on Perceptual Organization

2018

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Auditory signals arrive at the ear as a mixture that the brain must decompose into distinct sources based to a large extent on acoustic properties of the sounds. An important question concerns whether listeners have voluntary control over how many sources they perceive. This has been studied using pure high (H) and low (L) tones presented in the repeating pattern HLH-HLH-, which can form a bistable percept heard either as an integrated whole (HLH-) or as segregated into high (H-H-) and low (-L-) sequences. Although instructing listeners to try to integrate or segregate sounds affects reports of what they hear, this could reflect a response bias rather than a perceptual effect. We had human listeners (15 males, 12 females) continuously report their perception of such sequences and recorded neural activity using MEG. During neutral listening, a classifier trained on patterns of neural activity distinguished between periods of integrated and segregated perception. In other conditions, participants tried to influence their perception by allocating attention either to the whole sequence or to a subset of the sounds. They reported hearing the desired percept for a greater proportion of time than when listening neutrally. Critically, neural activity supported these reports; stimulus-locked brain responses in auditory cortex were more likely to resemble the signature of segregation when participants tried to hear segregation than when attempting to perceive integration. These results indicate that listeners can influence how many sound sources they perceive, as reflected in neural responses that track both the input and its perceptual organization.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Can we consciously influence our perception of the external world? We address this question using sound sequences that can be heard either as coming from a single source or as two distinct auditory streams. Listeners reported spontaneous changes in their perception between these two interpretations while we recorded neural activity to identify signatures of such integration and segregation. They also indicated that they could, to some extent, choose between these alternatives. This claim was supported by corresponding changes in responses in auditory cortex. By linking neural and behavioral correlates of perception, we demonstrate that the number of objects that we perceive can depend not only on the physical attributes of our environment, but also on how we intend to experience it.

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Using a staircase procedure for the objective measurement of auditory stream integration and segregation thresholds

Cited by 10 publications

References 50 publications

Predictability effects in auditory scene analysis: a review

Predictability effects in auditory scene analysis: a review

Sound segregation via embedded repetition is robust to inattention.

Neural Decoding of Bistable Sounds Reveals an Effect of Intention on Perceptual Organization

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