Document Detail


Effective attenuation of signals in noise under focused attention.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  1918627     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
When attending to a tone at a given frequency, listeners are most sensitive to that tone and others within a restricted band of frequencies surrounding it. This region of enhanced sensitivity defines the attention band that was measured in two experiments using a modified version of the probe-signal method of Greenberg and Larkin [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 44, 1513-1523 (1968)]. Experiment 1 showed that at five center frequencies, from 0.25 to 4.0 kHz, the shape of the attention band resembles that of the auditory filter as inferred from notched-noise masking experiments by other investigators. The width of the attention band is close to the critical band at higher frequencies, but only half as wide at 0.25 and 0.5 kHz. Experiment 2 produced psychometric functions for unattended probe tones at least 0.23 kHz away from a fully attended, 1-kHz target tone. From these functions, the effective attenuation, measured as the threshold difference between the 1-kHz target and the probes, was estimated to be 7 dB; the amount of attenuation appeared to be about the same regardless of how far the probe frequency was from the attended band. One interpretation of these results is that bands centered on the unattended tones contribute to the decision process with some small but measurable weight and are not entirely ignored.
Authors:
H P Dai; B Scharf; S Buus
Related Documents :
16865387 - When males whistle at females: complex fm acoustic signals in cockroaches.
9637037 - Evidence for an across-frequency, between-channel process in asymptotic monaural tempor...
6655127 - Frequency discrimination and signal detection in band-reject noise.
17485977 - Combined effects of frequency compression-expansion and shift on speech recognition.
1791177 - Musculoskeletal design in relation to body size.
11520507 - Visual aftereffects of sequential perception: dynamic adaptation to changes in texture ...
Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.    
Journal Detail:
Title:  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America     Volume:  89     ISSN:  0001-4966     ISO Abbreviation:  J. Acoust. Soc. Am.     Publication Date:  1991 Jun 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  1991-11-14     Completed Date:  1991-11-14     Revised Date:  2007-11-14    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  7503051     Medline TA:  J Acoust Soc Am     Country:  UNITED STATES    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  2837-42     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville 32611.
Export Citation:
APA/MLA Format     Download EndNote     Download BibTex
MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Acoustics*
Adult
Attention*
Audiometry / methods
Humans
Noise*
Perceptual Masking / physiology*
Psychometrics
Grant Support
ID/Acronym/Agency:
NS07270/NS/NINDS NIH HHS; R29DC00437/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS; RR07143/RR/NCRR NIH HHS

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


Previous Document:  Coding of vibrotactile stimulus frequency by Pacinian corpuscle afferents.
Next Document:  Performance of hearing-impaired persons on auditory enhancement tasks.