Re: classical (and fun) experiments in psychoacoustics? (Marc Schoenwiesner )


Subject: Re: classical (and fun) experiments in psychoacoustics?
From:    Marc Schoenwiesner  <marcs@xxxxxxxx>
Date:    Mon, 4 May 2009 20:14:04 -0400
List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>

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 ================================== ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.


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