Auditory temporal processing

声音，就其本质而言，是需要时间来展开的事件。许多听觉科学都致力于探测声音、辨别和识别声音，或在空间中定位声音的过程。提出的研究特别针对听觉的时间过程。对一个声音的感知处理是否以某种方式污染了对时间上相邻声音的感知处理？如果是，以什么方式？我们对听觉世界的私人、主观体验的展现，与物理刺激的实际状态有多真实？我们如何恰当地衡量我们的听觉体验展开的分辨率？拟议的研究直接解决了这些问题。其中一个研究方向是听力的选择性适应。它探索在一个维度（例如，位置）的一个点上的声音经验如何沿着该维度改变对下一个声音的敏感性。第二项研究是关于跳跃错觉。它探讨了关于一个声音的信息是如何影响对一个暂时接近的声音的信息的处理的，包括一个声音的感知被后来的声音的出现所影响的情况。我们的第三条研究路线寻求对方法论问题的实证答案。目前，至少有两种心理物理学方法被用来测量所谓的“听觉间隙检测阈值”。这些阈值是测量两个声音之间可检测到的最短沉默时间，因此是听觉时间敏锐度的测量。但是，这两种方法实际上测量的是相同的感知性能参数吗？我们怀疑它们不会，但这需要实验证明。总之，这些研究线建立在前两个资助周期取得的突破的基础上，并为人类听觉系统内处理的时间特性提供了新的见解。

Sounds, by their very nature, are events that take time to unfold. Much of hearing science has been devoted to the processes involved in detecting sounds, discriminating and identifying them, or locating them in space. The proposed research specifically targets temporal processes in hearing. Does the perceptual processing of one sound in some way contaminate the perceptual processing of temporally adjacent sounds? If so, in what ways? How truthful to the actual state of the physical stimulus is the unfolding of our private, subjective experience of the auditory world? How do we appropriately measure the resolution with which our auditory experience unfolds? The proposed research tackles these questions directly. One line of the research is on selective adaptation in hearing. It explores how experience of a sound at one point along a dimension (e.g., location) shifts sensitivity along that dimension for the next sound that occurs. A second line of research is on the saltation illusion. It explores how information about one sound can affect the processing of information about a temporally proximate sound, including the case of the perception of one sound being affected by the occurrence of a later sound. Our third line of research seeks an empirical answer to a methodological question. Currently, at least two psychophysical methods are being employed to measure what are called "auditory gap detection thresholds." These thresholds are measures of the shortest detectable period of silence between two sounds, and are thus a measure of auditory temporal acuity. But do the two methods actually measure the same parameter of perceptual performance? We suspect that they don't, but that needs to be proved experimentally. Together, these lines of enquiry build on the breakthroughs made in the preceding two grant cycles, and offer new insights into the temporal properties of processing within the human auditory system.