Central Factors in Auditory Masking

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请要求支持继续研究，旨在了解感音神经性听力损失听众和正常听力听众的听觉掩蔽的外围和中心因素。研究的具体目的包括：考察知觉和认知因素在听觉掩蔽中的作用；确定以中心为基础的“信息掩蔽”在听力损失听众所经历的沟通困难中的作用；将听觉掩蔽理论扩展到包括信息掩蔽。在过去的奖励期内，对信息掩蔽的理解取得了实质性进展，即不能归因于重叠激励模式的掩蔽。最近的一项重要发现是，感觉神经性听力损失患者在复杂环境中似乎很难分离和关注听觉“流”。这种困难导致信息掩蔽增加，可能是听力损失的听众所经历的沟通困难的重要部分。提出的研究计划旨在进一步研究这一发现，并扩展听觉掩蔽的实证和理论工作。实证工作包括一系列人类心理物理和言语识别实验，其中信号或目标被不同比例的基于外围的“能量掩蔽”和基于中心的信息掩蔽的声音所掩盖。研究计划的一个基本方面是测试通常有助于声音感知分离的各种线索的有效性。此外，还考察了不同程度的先验信息的有用性。这些实验涵盖了从检测到识别到非语音和语音识别的一系列任务。我们建议对感觉神经性听力损失的听众群体和听力正常的听众群体进行一组掩蔽实验，以评估听力损失和任务复杂性如何相互作用。理论工作有几个方面，包括更好地理解掩蔽机制，并在听力正常和听力受损的听众中建立这些机制的模型。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，如餐馆、聚会或其他同时有许多声音的情况下，以及听力情况复杂和不确定的情况下，沟通会遇到如此大的困难。

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.