Central Factors in Auditory Masking

描述(由申请人提供)：本申请请求支持继续研究，旨在了解感觉神经性耳聋和听力正常的听者在听觉掩蔽中的外周和中枢因素。具体目的包括考察知觉和认知因素在听觉掩蔽中的作用，确定基于中央的信息掩蔽在听力损失的听者经历的沟通困难中的作用，以及将听觉掩蔽理论扩展到包括信息掩蔽。在过去的授奖期间，在对信息掩蔽的理解方面取得了实质性进展--即不能归因于重叠激发模式的掩蔽。最近工作的一个重要发现是，感觉神经性听力损失的人在复杂的环境中似乎很难分离和照顾听觉“流”。这一困难导致了信息掩饰的增加，可能是听力损失的听者所经历的沟通困难的重要部分。拟议的研究计划旨在进一步检验这一发现，并扩展关于听觉掩蔽的经验和理论工作。这项经验性的工作包括一系列人类心理物理和语音识别实验，在这些实验中，信号或目标被声音掩蔽，声音具有不同比例的基于外围的“能量掩蔽”和基于中央的信息掩蔽。研究计划的一个基本方面是测试各种线索的有效性，这些线索通常有助于声音的知觉分离。此外，还考察了不同程度的先验信息的有用性。这些实验跨越了一系列任务，从检测到辨别，再到非语音和语音识别。我们建议在一系列掩蔽实验中测试感觉神经性听力损失的听者组，并将听力正常的听者组配对，以评估听力损失和任务复杂性是如何相互作用的。这项理论工作有几个方面，包括更好地理解掩饰机制，以及在听力正常和听力受损的听者中对这些机制进行建模。这项工作的最终目标是理解为什么听力损失的人在困难的情况下会遇到如此大的沟通困难，如餐馆、派对或其他同时有许多声音并且听力情况复杂和不确定的情况。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application requests support to continue research aimed at understanding peripheral and central factors in auditory masking both in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss and in listeners with normal hearing. The specific aims include examining the role of perceptual and cognitive factors in auditory masking, determining the role of centrally-based "informational masking" in the communication difficulties experienced by listeners with hearing loss, and extending the theory of auditory masking to include informational masking. During the past award period, substantial progress was made in the understanding of informational masking - that is, masking that cannot be attributed to overlapping patterns of excitation. One important finding from recent work is that persons with sensorineural hearing loss appear to have great difficulty in segregating and attending to auditory "streams" in complex environments. This difficulty leads to increased informational masking and may be a significant part of the communication difficulties experienced by listeners with hearing loss. The proposed research plan is intended to further examine this finding and to extend the empirical and theoretical work on auditory masking. The empirical work consists of a series of human psychophysical and speech identification experiments in which signals or targets are masked by sounds having different proportions of peripherally-based "energetic masking" and centrally-based informational masking. A fundamental aspect of the research plan is to test the effectiveness of various cues that normally facilitate perceptual segregation of sounds. In addition, the usefulness of varying degrees of a priori information is examined. These experiments span a range of tasks from detection through discrimination to nonspeech and speech identification. We propose to test groups of listeners with sensorineural hearing loss, and matched groups of listeners with normal hearing, on a set of masking experiments that assess how hearing loss and task complexity interact. The theoretical work has several facets, including developing a better understanding of the mechanisms of masking and of modeling those mechanisms in both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. The ultimate goal of this work is to understand why people with hearing loss experience such great difficulty communicating in difficult situations like restaurants, parties, or other circumstances where there are many sounds at once and the listening situation is complex and uncertain.