Biomedical subjects

Uma Balakrishnan

Publications and source records attributed to Uma Balakrishnan.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Auditory target detection in reverberation.

Measurements and theoretical predictions of auditory target detection in simulated reverberant conditions are reported. The target signals were pulsed 1/3-octave bands of noise and the masker signal was a continuous wideband noise. Target and masker signals were passed through a software simulation of a reverberant room with a rigid sphere modeling a listener's head. The location of the target was fixed while the location of the masker was varied in the simulated room. Degree of reverberation was controlled by varying the uniform acoustic absorption of the simulated room's surfaces. The resulting target and masker signals were presented to the listeners over headphones in monaural-left, monaural-right, or binaural listening modes. Changes in detection performance in the monaural listening modes were largely predictable from the changes in target-to-masker ratio in the target band, but with a few dB of extra masking in reverberation. Binaural detection performance was generally well predicted by applying Durlach's [in Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory (Academic, New York, 1972)] equalization-cancellation theory to the direct-plus-reverberant ear signals. Predictions in all cases were based on a statistical description of room acoustics and on acoustic diffraction by a sphere. The success of these detection models in the present well-controlled reverberant conditions suggests that they can be used to incorporate listening mode and source location as factors in speech-intelligibility predictions.

Acoustics↗

PubMed2004

Effect of number of masking talkers and auditory priming on informational masking in speech recognition.

Three experiments investigated factors that influence the creation of and release from informational masking in speech recognition. The target stimuli were nonsense sentences spoken by a female talker. In experiment 1 the masker was a mixture of three, four, six, or ten female talkers, all reciting similar nonsense sentences. Listeners' recognition performance was measured with both target and masker presented from a front loudspeaker (F-F) or with a masker presented from two loudspeakers, with the right leading the front by 4 ms (F-RF). In the latter condition the target and masker appear to be from different locations. This aids recognition performance for one- and two-talker maskers, but not for noise. As the number of masking talkers increased to ten, the improvement in the F-RF condition diminished, but did not disappear. The second experiment investigated whether hearing a preview (prime) of the target sentence before it was presented in masking improved recognition for the last key word, which was not included in the prime. Marked improvements occurred only for the F-F condition with two-talker masking, not for continuous noise or F-RF two-talker masking. The third experiment found that the benefit of priming in the F-F condition was maintained if the prime sentence was spoken by a different talker or even if it was printed and read silently. These results suggest that informational masking can be overcome by factors that improve listeners' auditory attention toward the target.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Lateralization and detection of pulse trains with alternating interaural time delays.

The effect of onset interaural time differences (ITDs) on lateralization and detection was investigated for broadband pulse trains 250 ms long with a binaural fundamental frequency of 250 Hz. Within each train, ITDs of successive binaural pulse pairs alternated between two of three values (0 micros, 500 micros left-leading, and 500 micros right-leading) or were invariant. For the alternating conditions, the experimental manipulation was the choice of which of two ITDs was presented first (i.e., at stimulus onset). Lateralization, which was estimated using a broadband noise pointer with a listener adjustable interaural delay, was determined largely by the onset ITD. However, detection thresholds for the signals in left-leading or diotic continuous broadband noise were not affected by where the signals were lateralized. A quantitative analysis suggested that binaural masked thresholds for the pulse trains were well accounted for by the level and phase of harmonic components at 500 and 750 Hz. Detection thresholds obtained for brief stimuli (two binaural pulse or noise burst pairs) were also independent of which of two ITDs was presented first. The control of lateralization by onset cues appears to be based on mechanisms not essential for binaural detection.

Adult↗