A profile of profile analysis

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, David M. Green and his collaborators published a series of papers and a book detailing a view of intensity discrimination that they termed profile analysis. The basic idea was that, in certain situations, masked intensity discrimination is accomplished through an analysis of spectral shape, rather than a successive comparison of intensities in the spectral region of the intensity change. In other words, masker energy in spectral regions far removed from the intensity change can have a profound influence—either positive or negative, depending, among other factors, on the listener’s uncertainty and expectations regarding the masker’s spectral shape—on intensity-discrimination performance, an idea that diverged sharply from classical models based on a single inflexible channel. Consequently, Green’s work on profile analysis both spurred on, and became part of, a broader movement within psychoacoustics that emerged around the same time, in which classical theory and methods began to comingle with higher-level concepts (uncertainty, expectation, etc.). This talk will use Green’s own reflections, along with those of his collaborators, to trace the development and theoretical consequences of his work on profile analysis, with a particular emphasis on its relation to this broader historical movement.