Listening Exposure Research Articles

STRATEGI DAN TEKNIK PENGAJARAN BAHASA ARAB DENGAN METODE LANGUAGE IMMERSION

<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>This research aims to understand strategies and techniques for teaching Arabic that a teacher can apply to learn Arabic using the language immersion method. Using this method, students can learn languages by interacting directly with the language environment in which they will learn them to learn how to speak, read, write, or listen directly. By collecting data from articles that discuss language immersion in language learning, researchers use a type of qualitative research with the nature of library studies that use books and scientific works as the object of study, which are then analyzed descriptively to produce a clear, systematic, objective, analytical, and critical discussion of strategies and techniques for teaching Arabic using language immersion. The results of the literature analysis show that strategies and techniques for teaching Arabic using the language immersion method effectively improve students' speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. The key aspects of this method are the focus on active conversation, speaking practice, intensive listening exposure, reading and understanding of Arabic texts, and writing activities.</em></p>

Context-specific Knowledge Is the “Key” to Salsa Music

ABSTRACT Introduction Previous research has shown ways in which both formal training and informal exposure affect perceptual experience and the development of musical abilities. Here we asked what types of training and exposure are necessary to acquire the context-specific knowledge associated with expertise. We specifically focused on the perception of salsa music: a genre that is rich in rhythmic complexity, but has received relatively little attention in experimental settings. Methods We examined specific groups within the exposure and training populations: those with musical training in the production of salsa rhythms (Study 1) and “native listeners” who grew up listening to salsa music without formal training (Study 2). Using two clave patterns (3–2 and 2–3 son clave) and three constructed alternatives, we asked participants to choose the correct clave pattern for a variety of music excerpts. Results We found that informal listening exposure was not enough to detect the salsa–clave pairings. Instead, proficiency was only developed when training and exposure were both domain-specific. Discussion Our results show the importance of deliberate training and the degree to which expertise comes to fruition through context-specific focus, thus helping to illuminate the complex relationship between the local and the universal in musical-cultural experience.

Correlation between Students’ English Listening Skills, Vocabulary Skills and Out-of-school Listening Exposure

Correlation between Students’ English Listening Skills, Vocabulary Skills and Out-of-school Listening Exposure

Speech intelligibility in rooms: Disrupting the effect of prior listening exposure.

It has been demonstrated that prior listening exposure to reverberant environments can improve speech understanding in that environment. Previous studies have shown that the buildup of this effect is brief (less than 1 s) and seems largely to be elicited by exposure to the temporal modulation characteristics of the room environment. Situations that might be expected to cause a disruption in this process have yet to be demonstrated. This study seeks to address this issue by showing what types of changes in the acoustic environment cause a breakdown of the room exposure phenomenon. Using speech carrier phrases featuring sudden changes in the acoustic environment, breakdown in the room exposure effect was observed when there was change in the late reverberation characteristics of the room that signaled a different room environment. Changes in patterns of early reflections within the same room environment did not elicit breakdown. Because the environmental situations that resulted in breakdown also resulted in substantial changes to the broadband temporal modulation characteristic of the signal reaching the ears, results from this study provide additional support for the hypothesis that the room exposure phenomenon is linked to the temporal modulation characteristics of the environment.

BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi for Giving Listening Exposure to Students: A View from Humour Perspective

Using authentic materials to give listening exposure is essential to improve English language learners’ listening skill and using radio is one way to do so. To reduce anxiety in listening, choosing humorous material can be done as humour has been proven beneficial in classroom context, for example, in reducing stress. Using the partial result of a study conducted by the same author and completed by library study about ethics of using humour in the classroom, this study is to investigate whether verbal humour found in BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi is suitable to be used in classroom context. Analysing every type verbal humour found in the radio drama, this study points out that verbal humour found in BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi is generally not appropriate to be used in classroom because it has a quite high number of inappropriate verbal humour, such as sarcasm and satire.Keywords: listening exposure, verbal humour, appropriateness.

Speech intelligibility in rooms: Effect of prior listening exposure interacts with room acoustics.

There is now converging evidence that a brief period of prior listening exposure to a reverberant room can influence speech understanding in that environment. Although the effect appears to depend critically on the amplitude modulation characteristic of the speech signal reaching the ear, the extent to which the effect may be influenced by room acoustics has not been thoroughly evaluated. This study seeks to fill this gap in knowledge by testing the effect of prior listening exposure or listening context on speech understanding in five different simulated sound fields, ranging from anechoic space to a room with broadband reverberation time (T60) of approximately 3 s. Although substantial individual variability in the effect was observed and quantified, the context effect was, on average, strongly room dependent. At threshold, the effect was minimal in anechoic space, increased to a maximum of 3 dB on average in moderate reverberation (T60 = 1 s), and returned to minimal levels again in high reverberation. This interaction suggests that the functional effects of prior listening exposure may be limited to sound fields with moderate reverberation (0.4 ≤ T60 ≤ 1 s).

Non-Arbitrariness in Mapping Word Form to Meaning: Cross-Linguistic Formal Markers of Word Concreteness.

Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic differences, abstract and concrete words are also marked by distinct morphophonological structures such as length and morphological complexity. Native English speakers show sensitivity to these markers in tasks such as auditory word recognition and naming. One unanswered question is whether this violation of arbitrariness reflects an idiosyncratic property of the English lexicon or whether word concreteness is a marked phenomenon across other natural languages. We isolated concrete and abstract English nouns (N=400), and translated each into Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Mandarin, Hindi, Korean, Hebrew, and American Sign Language. We conducted offline acoustic analyses of abstract and concrete word length discrepancies across languages. In a separate experiment, native English speakers (N=56) with no prior knowledge of these foreign languages judged concreteness of these nouns (e.g., Can you see, hear, feel, or touch this? Yes/No). Each naïve participant heard pre-recorded words presented in randomized blocks of three foreign languages following a brief listening exposure to a narrative sample from each respective language. Concrete and abstract words differed by length across five of eight languages, and prediction accuracy exceeded chance for four of eight languages. These results suggest that word concreteness is a marked phenomenon across several of the world's most widely spoken languages. We interpret these findings as supportive of an adaptive cognitive heuristic that allows listeners to exploit non-arbitrary mappings of word form to word meaning.

Prior exposure to a reverberant listening environment improves speech intelligibility in adult cochlear implant listeners

Objectives: The goal of this study is to investigate whether prior exposure to reverberant listening environment improves speech intelligibility of adult cochlear implant (CI) users.Methods: Six adult CI users participated in this study. Speech intelligibility was measured in five different simulated reverberant listening environments with two different speech corpuses. Within each listening environment, prior exposure was varied by either having the same environment across all trials (blocked presentation) or having different environment from trial to trial (unblocked).Results: Speech intelligibility decreased as reverberation time increased. Although substantial individual variability was observed, all CI listeners showed an increase in the blocked presentation condition as compared to the unblocked presentation condition for both speech corpuses.Conclusion: Prior listening exposure to a reverberant listening environment improves speech intelligibility in adult CI listeners. Further research is required to understand the underlying mechanism of adaptation to listening environment.

Amplitude modulation sensitivity in rooms

The physical effects of room acoustics on sound emitted from an amplitude-modulated (AM) source is well understood and can be effectively characterized by the modulation transfer function (MTF) of the room. Human sensitivity to AM is also well understood under conditions which minimize the acoustical contributions of the listening environment, and can analogously be characterized using the MTF concept. Although it may be predicted that AM sensitivity in a reverberant soundfield could be explained if both AM sensitivity in the absence of the soundfield and the MTF of the room are known, little empirical data exist in the literature to validate this prediction. Here, we summarize recent work in our laboratory that addresses this issue. A consistent finding is that predicted AM sensitivity underestimates measured sensitivity for reverberant soundfield listening. This result appears to depend critically on prior listening exposure to the soundfield, and is consistent with recent neural data from other laboratories. It may also explain why speech understanding in normal-hearing populations is typically unaffected by the acoustical degradations caused by reverberation. [Work supported by NIH-NIDCD.]

Amplitude modulation detection by human listeners in reverberant sound fields: Effects of prior listening exposure

Previous work [Zahorik et al., POMA, 15, 050002 (2012)] has reported that for both broadband and narrowband noise carrier signals in a simulated reverberant sound field, human sensitivity to amplitude modulation (AM) is higher than would be predicted based on the acoustical modulation transfer function (MTF) of the listening environment. These results may be suggestive of mechanisms that functionally enhance modulation in reverberant listening, although many details of this enhancement effect are unknown. Given recent findings that demonstrate improvements in speech understanding with prior exposure to reverberant listening environments, it is of interest to determine whether listening exposure to a reverberant room might also influence AM detection in the room, and perhaps contribute to the AM enhancement effect. Here, AM detection thresholds were estimated (using an adaptive 2-alternative forced-choice procedure) in each of two listening conditions: one in which consistent listening exposure to a particular room was provided, and a second that intentionally disrupted listening exposure by varying the room from trial-to-trial. Results suggest that consistent prior listening exposure contributes to enhanced AM sensitivity in rooms, but that it is not the sole determinant of the enhancement. [Work supported by the NIH/NIDCD.]

Prior listening exposure to a reverberant room improves open-set intelligibility of high-variability sentences

Previous studies have demonstrated that speech understanding in reverberant rooms improves when listeners are given prior exposure to the room. Results from these room-adaptation studies are limited, however, because they were conducted with materials that are not representative of the high acoustic variability observed in speech signals during everyday communication. Here, room adaptation effects were measured using an open-set speech corpus with high lexical and indexical variability and virtual auditory space techniques to simulate binaural listening in rooms. Room adaptation effects of comparable magnitude to previous studies were observed, suggesting general importance for facilitating speech intelligibility in reverberation.

Occupational Exposures to Noise Resulting from the Workplace Use of Personal Media Players at a Manufacturing Facility

This study examined the contribution of noise exposures from personal media player (PMP) use in the workplace to overall employee noise exposures at a Colorado manufacturing facility. A total of 24 workers’ PMP and background noise exposures were measured. Twelve PMP users worked in high-background-noise exposure (HBNE) areas, and 12 worked in low-background-noise exposure (LBNE) areas. The self-selected PMP listening level of each worker was measured using an ear simulator, and the background noise of each employee workstation was measured using a sound level meter. Workers’ self-reported PMP duration of use, PMP listening exposure levels, and background noise levels were used to estimate the daily occupational noise exposures. Measured background noise levels averaged 81 dBA for HBNE workers and 59 dBA for LBNE workers. Measured, free-field equivalent listening exposure levels were significantly greater for HBNE workers (85 dBA) compared with LBNE workers (75 dBA) (p = 0.0006). Estimated mean daily noise exposures for both groups were below the ACGIH threshold limit value for noise of 85 dBA8-hr time weighted average (TWA), specifically 84 dBA TWA for HBNE workers and 72 dBA TWA for LBNE workers. Three of 12 (25%) HBNE workers had estimated exposures greater than 85 dBA TWA when only background noise was considered, yet when PMP use was also considered, 6 of 12 (50%) had estimated exposures greater than 85 dBA TWA, suggesting that PMP use doubled the number of overexposed workers. None of the LBNE workers had estimated exposures greater than 85 dBA TWA. The contribution of PMP use to overall noise exposures was substantially less among HBNE workers than LBNE workers due to the disproportionate selection of noise-attenuating headsets among HBNE workers compared with LBNE workers. It is recommended that the facility management either restrict workplace PMP use among HBNE workers or require output-limiting technology to prevent occupational noise-induced hearing loss.

Speech intelligibility improves with listening exposure in reverberant rooms

Emerging evidence suggests that speech perception in a reverberant room can be altered by recent listening exposure to the room. This result is interesting and important because it suggests that perceptual aspects related to room acoustics are not constant as a function of listening time, and it may help to better understand why hearing-impaired listeners often report difficulty with speech understanding in reverberation. Virtual auditory space techniques have been a key component of the research on this effect, since they allow both realistic simulation of reverberant room listening environments, and a level of stimulus control that would be impossible for real-room listening. Here, recent work demonstrating objective improvements in speech intelligibility with room exposure is summarized, with particular focus on details of the effect including its time course and its sensitivity to different speech materials. [Work supported by the NIH/NIDCD.]

Perceptual adaptation to room acoustics and effects on speech intelligibility.

The perceptual characteristics of sound in enclosed spaces are typically considered to be constant as a function of time, provided the source of sound also remains constant. Emerging evidence suggests, however, that at least for certain classes of room enclosures, the perceived acoustical contributions of the room decrease as listening time within the room is increased. A process of perceptual adaptation in which the acoustical contributions of the room are suppressed is likely responsible for this change. Here, a series of experiments is described that demonstrates objective improvements in speech intelligibility in reverberant rooms due presumably to room adaptation processes. Headphone-based auralization techniques were used to simulate the acoustics of various listening rooms used in the experiments, ranging from anechoic to highly reverberant space (broadband T60 = 3 s). When listeners were provided with brief (<10 s) room listening exposure via a carrier phrase prior to the test phrase used for intelligibility assessment, intelligibility improved by as much as 20%. Although variability in the effect was observed between listeners, it appears to require binaural input and is specific to moderately reverberant rooms (0.3 ⩽ T60 ⩽ 1 s). [Work supported by NIH R01DC008168.]

Prior listening in rooms improves speech intelligibility

Although results from previous studies have demonstrated that the acoustic effects of a single reflection are perceptually suppressed after repeated exposure to a particular configuration of source and reflection, the extent to which this dynamic echo suppression might generalize to speech understanding in room environments with multiple reflections and reverberation is largely unknown. Here speech intelligibility was measured using the coordinate response measure corpus both with and without prior listening exposure to a reverberant room environment, which was simulated using virtual auditory space techniques. Prior room listening exposure was manipulated by presenting either a two-sentence carrier phrase that preceded the target speech, or no carrier phrase within the room environment. Results from 14 listeners indicate that with prior room exposure, masked speech reception thresholds were on average 2.7 dB lower than thresholds without exposure, an improvement in intelligibility of over 18 percentage points on average. This effect, which is shown to be absent in anechoic space and greatly reduced under monaural listening conditions, demonstrates that prior binaural exposure to reverberant rooms can improve speech intelligibility, perhaps due to a process of perceptual adaptation to the acoustics of the listening room.

Effect of a Pretest Listening Exposure on the Ascending-Descending Gap at Most Comfortable Loudness Levels

The effect of approach mode (ascending versus descending, A-D) on comfortable loudness was determined for a 1000 Hz pure tone using Békésy audiometry. Two groups (experimental and control) of 10 normal-hearing young adult subjects measured their most comfortable loudness (MCL) levels pre- and post-treatment. The experimental group received a treatment of a listening exposure to a 70 dB intensity range before the test. The results demonstrated a statistically significant change of the A-D gap in the experimental group while the A-D gap for the control group remained essentially unchanged. It is proposed that MCL is underestimated in the ascending approach and overestimated on the descending testing, which results in the A-D gap. In addition, the results demonstrate the importance of the procedures used in research and clinic of the MCL.