Re: classical (and fun) experiments in psychoacoustics?

[Marc Schoenwiesner <marcs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses to my question about classical psychoacoustic  
experiments suitable for an experimentation course! I?ll summarize  
them here for everyone?s benefit:

Ward Drennan suggested Fletcher's noise-band experiment. - This is  
indeed a classic, and easily implemented, too.

Pascale Lidji suggested I use consonants rather than vowels in a  
categorical perception experiment, and also some of Diana Deutsch's  
auditory illusions. - Illusions are always a classroom success; will  
look into those. And I'll also come back to the offer of using some of  
your stimuli. Merci!

Patrick Zurek from Sensimetrics pointed out that many such experiments  
are part of a teaching tool called Auditory Interactivities. - Some  
others also mentioned this tool, but I think I?ll stick to actual  
research tools like Matlab, mainly because the time spent on those  
will transfer directly to the students? research projects later on.

Ingrid Johnsrude suggested an experiment on ITDs and sound  
localization using some plastic hose and ear defenders (the hose is  
pushed through two holes in the ear defenders, so that the subject has  
a closed auditory environment, consisting of the space inside the  
hose. The experimenter taps the hose with a pencil in various places  
and the subject has to say whether they heard the tap on the right or  
left or midline). - This is a great experiment! I don?t think it can  
get any more ?hands on?! I also agree that virtual auditory space and  
HRTFs make for some good experiments.

Bob Carlyon suggested Plomp's classical experiment on whether the low  
or high harmonics are dominant for pitch, and experiments on the  
continuity illusion. - Thanks for the good advice, both are certainly  
classics.

Claude Alain also suggested the continuity illusion, and the ABA and  
mistuned harmonic paradigms. - ABA is on my list, and the mistuned  
harmonic effect is a good idea. I will put it in a series of  
experiments on harmonics and pitch perception, together with Bob?s  
suggestion and the missing fundamentals.

Malcom Slaney sent a paper Acoustical Society Demonstration CD  
(Hartmann 1993). - Thanks! I have the CD, but had not seen the paper.

Joachim Thiemann suggested experiments related to binaural  
hearing/phase perception.

Lance Nizami pointed out that Licklider's 1948 demonstration of  
binaural unmasking is mandatory. - I agree, and again this is  
straightforward to implement.

Sarah Ferguson suggested using the ASA Auditory Demonstration CD,  
Watson's Test of Basic Auditory Capabilities, and audiometers. - The  
CD is great; I?m already using it in a perception course. We have two  
clinical audiometers here and I?ll let the students measure their  
hearing curves.

Syvlie Hebert suggested phonemic restoration (replacing a phoneme with  
noise and having it perceptually restored depending on the phrase  
context). - This fits very well with the continuity illusions. The  
stimuli are a bit more difficult to make, though (this is for a  
French-speaking audience.)

Jeremy Federman suggested the precedence effect (easy to set up with a  
couple of loudspeakers) and Huggins pitch as a way to demo binaural  
listening. - I may use some realtime DSP so they can talk into a  
microphone and change the timing between the different speakers - this  
sounds like fun.

Stuart Rosen suggested a temporal modulation transfer experiment and a  
gap detection experiment. He pointed out that there are a whole bunch  
of other fun things to do with speech: noise-vocoded speech,  
filtering, audio-visual perception. He also pointed me to his superbly  
organized auditory perception course web site. - Thanks Stuart, I?m  
learning a lot about how to structure such a course from the info on  
your web site. The TMTF would be an excellent example of a transfer  
function measurement. The TF concept will be good to know for the  
students, because it also applies to just about every piece of audio  
equipment. I was initially trying to avoid speech a bit (just as I do  
in my own research?), but I completely agree that some of the  
strongest demonstrations come from it. I?ll probably let them think  
about spectral and temporal information in speech and then let them  
play with noise-vocoded and sinewave speech.

Thanks for all suggestions!
Marc

==================================
Marc Schoenwiesner, PhD
International Laboratory for Brain
Music and Sound Research (BRAMS)
Pavillon 1420 Mont-Royal
Université de Montréal
Montréal, Québec           __o
Canada,  H2V 4P3         _`\<,_
fax: 514-343-2175       (+)/ (+)
tel: 514-343-6111 x3181
www.brams.umontreal.ca/marcs
lab website: www.brams.org
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