Central Factors in Auditory Masking

7.项目摘要/摘要 这项工作的目的是为了更好地了解交流 感音神经性耳聋的听者在复杂的， 多源声学环境。这项研究的基本前提是 基于的是，这种困难很大程度上是由于外围听力之间的相互作用 负责源隔离的损失和更集中的流程，重点 以及分散注意力和工作记忆。在理论层面上，我们的观点是 声源之间的竞争可以根据区别来描述 在两种基本的掩蔽机制之间：能量掩蔽，这主要是由于 听觉外周刺激的重叠模式；以及信息掩蔽， 这是由于听觉神经后期处理的局限性所致。 系统和大脑。这种区别普遍存在于影响“简单”的听觉任务中。 检测、辨别和识别以及语音识别。在总体水平上， 掩蔽中的外周因素和中枢因素都会影响掩蔽的形成、维持和 处理相关听觉事件的序列，或“流”和一个主题 贯穿这项工作的是更充分地理解顺序信息的处理。 这里采取的方法是试图评估能量和能量的影响 信息掩蔽对不同任务的绩效提出不同的要求 听觉系统的电平。我们的长期目标是发展一套完整的 听觉掩蔽，通常是能量掩蔽和信息掩蔽 成功预测了耳蜗性听力损失的后果。

7. Project Summary/Abstract The purpose of this work is to obtain a better understanding of the communication difficulties experienced by listeners with sensorineural hearing loss in complex, multisource acoustic environments. The basic premise upon which this research is based is that much of this difficulty is due to an interaction between peripheral hearing loss and more centrally-based processes responsible for source segregation, focused and divided attention, and working memory. On a theoretical level, our view is that the competition between sound sources may be characterized according to a distinction between two basic mechanisms of masking: energetic masking, which is primarily due to overlapping patterns of excitation in the auditory periphery; and informational masking, which results from the limitations on processing at later stages in the auditory nervous system and brain. This distinction is pervasive in auditory tasks affecting "simple" detection, discrimination and identification, and speech recognition. On a general level, both peripheral and central factors in masking affect the formation, maintenance, and processing of sequences of related auditory events, or "streams" and a theme throughout this work is to understand more fully the processing of sequential information. The approach taken here is to attempt to evaluate the influences of energetic and informational masking on performance in a variety of tasks placing demands at different levels oaf the auditory system. The long-range goal is to develop an integrated theory of auditory masking that accounts for energetic and informational masking generally and successfully predicts the consequences of cochlear hearing loss.