Auditory temporal processing

声音，就其本质而言，是需要时间来展开的事件。大部分听力科学都致力于检测声音、辨别和识别声音或在太空中定位声音的过程。这项拟议的研究特别针对听力中的时间过程。对一种声音的知觉处理是否以某种方式污染了对时间相邻声音的知觉处理？如果是这样的话，以什么方式？我们对听觉世界的私人主观体验的展开对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现出来的分辨率？这项拟议的研究直接解决了这些问题。这项研究的一条主线是关于听力的选择性适应。它探索了在一个维度(例如，位置)上的一个点上的声音体验如何改变了下一个声音在该维度上的敏感度。第二个研究方向是跳跃错觉。它探索了关于一个声音的信息如何影响关于时间上接近的声音的信息的处理，包括对一个声音的感知受到后来的声音出现的影响的情况。我们的第三条研究路线是寻求一个方法论问题的经验性答案。目前，至少有两种心理物理方法被用来测量所谓的“听觉间隙检测阈值”。这些阈值是对两个声音之间可检测到的最短静默时间的测量，因此也是听觉时间敏锐度的测量。但这两种方法实际上测量的知觉表现参数是相同的吗？我们怀疑他们没有，但这需要通过实验来证明。总而言之，这些询问路线建立在前两个赠款周期所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.