PERIPHERAL AND CENTRAL PROCESSES IN AUDITORY MASKING

这项工作的目的是为了更好地了解 感觉神经性聋患者听觉掩蔽的中枢因素 听力损失 在过去的二十年里， 包括外周和中枢的掩蔽过程 在很大程度上，由于研究 “信息掩蔽”。 信息掩蔽源于刺激 不确定性，涉及认知因素，如集中注意力， 记忆 信息掩蔽挖掘过程可能在以下方面很重要： 包含多个声源的日常收听环境， 不同程度的复杂性 本研究的目的是扩大 对听力损失听众进行信息掩蔽的工作。 这 由于听觉疾病的流行， 影响了感觉机制， 这种疾病通常会导致沟通，特别是在嘈杂的环境中。 听的条件。 虽然很明显感觉病理学 影响在外围执行的频谱和时间分析， 似乎有一个重要的组成部分，掩蔽，不能 完全归因于外围赤字。 计划是测试 假设一些患有感音神经性听力损失的听众- 特别是那些在噪音中交流非常困难的人， 在某些情况下会经历大量的信息掩蔽 并且没有充分利用通常会减少信息量的线索， 伪装 这一假设将通过一系列 使用耳蜗听觉的听者的心理声学实验 损失 我们的目标是将信息掩蔽的量与 利用线索克服信息掩蔽的能力， 作为病因和配置的损失，年龄和语音识别。一 相关的目标是更好地了解通常导致 信息掩蔽和线索或检测策略， 减少信息屏蔽。

The goal of this work is to gain better understanding of the role of central factors in auditory masking in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. During the past two decades, the appreciation of the process of masking as consisting of both peripheral and central components has greatly increased due in large part to studies of "informational masking". Informational masking arises from stimulus uncertainty and involves cognitive factors such as focused attention and memory. Informational masking taps processes that may be important in everyday listening environments containing multiple sound sources and varying degrees of complexity. The purpose of this study is to extend the work on informational masking to listeners with hearing loss. This knowledge is critical because of the prevalence of auditory pathologies affecting the sensory mechanism and the extreme difficulty in communication such pathologies often cause, particularly in noisy listening conditions. Although it is clear that sensory pathology affects the spectral and temporal analysis performed at the periphery, there appears to be a significant component to masking that cannot be attributed purely to peripheral deficits. The plan is to test the hypothesis that some listeners with sensorineural hearing loss- especially those reporting extreme difficulty communicating in noise- experience large amounts of informational masking in certain conditions and make poor use of the cues that normally reduce informational masking. This hypothesis will be examined through a series of psychoacoustical experiments employing listeners with cochlear hearing loss. The goal is to correlate the amount of informational masking and ability to use cues to overcome informational masking with factors such as etiology and configuration of loss, age and speech recognition. A related goal is to better understand the conditions that normally cause informational masking and the cues or detection strategies that can reduce informational masking.