Use Of Auditory Information Research Articles

Auditory processing abilities in school-aged children in the region of Vojvodina

Auditory processing is the process of decoding an auditory stimulus along the hearing pathways in the central nervous system. Children with auditory processing difficulties face challenges in the transmission, processing, organisation, and use of auditory information. This affects their spoken language, reading abilities, writing acquisition, and academic achievements. The aim of this study was to assess the auditory processing abilities of school-aged children from the region of Vojvodina using the Battery test for Auditory Processing Disorders PSP1 (Heđever, 2017). This study also aimed to examine the influence of age, gender, and school success on auditory processing abilities in school-aged children. The study sample consisted of 162 children between the ages of 6.7 and 11.6 years. The PSP-1 test battery consists of 4 subtests: filtered words test, speech-in-noise test, dichotic word test, and dichotic sentence test. Results have shown that 8 (4.94%) respondents on the PSP1 test achieved below average results, indicating auditory processing difficulties. Among these respondents, two were female (1.24%) and six were male (3.70%). Four respondents (2.48%) belonged to the second age group (from 7.7 to 8.6 years) and two respondents (1.24%) belonged to the first (from 6.7 to 7.6 years) and the fourth age group (from 9.7 to 10.6 years) each. Statistically significant differences were observed in the auditory processing abilities of the respondents in relation to their age (p < 0.001) and gender (p < 0.05). Girls had significantly better results on the total score of the PSP1 test, as well as in two subtests: the filtered words test and the dichotic word test. In addition, there was a statistically significant correlation between auditory processing abilities and school success.

Natural-Language-Driven Multimodal Representation Learning for Audio-Visual Scene-Aware Dialog System.

With the development of multimedia systems in wireless environments, the rising need for artificial intelligence is to design a system that can properly communicate with humans with a comprehensive understanding of various types of information in a human-like manner. Therefore, this paper addresses an audio-visual scene-aware dialog system that can communicate with users about audio-visual scenes. It is essential to understand not only visual and textual information but also audio information in a comprehensive way. Despite the substantial progress in multimodal representation learning with language and visual modalities, there are still two caveats: ineffective use of auditory information and the lack of interpretability of the deep learning systems' reasoning. To address these issues, we propose a novel audio-visual scene-aware dialog system that utilizes a set of explicit information from each modality as a form of natural language, which can be fused into a language model in a natural way. It leverages a transformer-based decoder to generate a coherent and correct response based on multimodal knowledge in a multitask learning setting. In addition, we also address the way of interpreting the model with a response-driven temporal moment localization method to verify how the system generates the response. The system itself provides the user with the evidence referred to in the system response process as a form of the timestamp of the scene. We show the superiority of the proposed model in all quantitative and qualitative measurements compared to the baseline. In particular, the proposed model achieved robust performance even in environments using all three modalities, including audio. We also conducted extensive experiments to investigate the proposed model. In addition, we obtained state-of-the-art performance in the system response reasoning task.

Recognizing fencing attacks from auditory and visual information: A comparison between expert fencers and novices

ObjectiveThe present study investigated the impact of audible and visual information for the prediction of attack movements in fencing, the raddoppio and the fleche. MethodA temporal occlusion paradigm with visually (i.e. soundless videos), auditory (i.e. the audio track of the videos), and audio-visually (i.e. video with audio track) presented attack movements was used to investigate 15 experts' (5 women; M age = 17.2 years, age range = 15–21) and 17 novices' (15 women; M age = 23.4 years, age range = 19–30) performance in predicting fencing attacks. ResultsResults showed that the number of correct answers for all stimulus conditions increased for both groups the later a video was occluded. Moreover, experts outperformed novices in all stimulus conditions. Regarding auditory information, results indicated that neither group efficiently integrated the sounds of fencing steps with the visually provided information, however, experts were better able than novices to make use of auditory information if no visual information was provided and to filter out auditory information otherwise. ConclusionFuture research might address the issue to what extent athletes might benefit from training interventions focusing on the use of auditory information.

Binaural processing in adults with a history of traumatic brain injury

An auditory processing deficit is a perceptual issue affecting how the central auditory nervous system understands and makes use of auditory information. Auditory processing deficits are typically associated with the pediatric population; however, anecdotal clinical evidence and the recent focus on central auditory effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) suggests that auditory processing deficits may be prevalent among adults with a history of TBI. Individuals with symptoms of an auditory processing deficit often score within the normal range on standard clinical assessments. The objectiveof the current study, therefore, was to target measures of binaural processing to identify and characterize auditory processing deficits among adults with a history of TBI. Two groups were recruited: adults with a history of TBI and a control group. Binaural processing was measured with: 1) the Revised Speech Perception in Noise test measured in soundfield; 2) dichotic word recognition without and with low-pass filtering measured in the free recall and directed recall conditions; 3) the 500-Hz masking level difference; and 4) the Listening in Spatialized Noise Sentences Test. Results suggest that individuals with a history of TBI have lower than normal binaural performance.

Choosing the shortest way to mum: Auditory guided rotation in 6- to 9-month-old infants

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of auditory information for rotation of the shortest way in twelve 6- to 9-month-old sighted infants. Behavior was manipulated by means of an auditory stimulus presented in four different directional angles (90°, 112.5°, 135°, and 157.5°) to the right and to the left behind the infants, and in one non-directional angle (180°). Infants lay in a prone position and had magnetic trackers fastened to the head and body which measured their rotation direction and angular velocity. The results showed that infants not only consistently chose the shortest over the longest way, but also rotated with a higher peak angular velocity as the angle to be covered between themselves and the goal increased. The results did not show significant preferences for one particular rotation direction. The study can contribute to the understanding of the auditory system as a functional listening system where auditory information is used as a perceptual source for prospectively guiding behavior in the environment.

Shake, Rattle, and … One or Two Objects? Young Infants' Use of Auditory Information to Individuate Objects

Most research on object individuation in infants has focused on the visual domain. Yet the problem of object individuation is not unique to the visual system, but shared by other sensory modalities. This research examined 4.5-month-old infants' capacity to use auditory information to individuate objects. Infants were presented with events in which they heard 2 distinct sounds, separated by a temporal gap, emanate from behind a wide screen; the screen was then lowered to reveal 1 or 2 objects. Longer looking to the 1- than 2-object display was taken as evidence that the infants (a) interpreted the auditory event as involving 2 objects and (b) found the presence of only 1 object when the screen was lowered unexpected. The results indicated that the infants used sounds produced by rattles, but not sounds produced by an electronic keyboard, as the basis for object individuation (Experiments 1 and 2). Data collected with adult participants revealed that adults are also more sensitive to rattle sounds than electronic tones. A final experiment assessed conditions under which young infants attend to rattle sounds (Experiment 3). Collectively, the outcomes of these experiments suggest that infants and adults are more likely to use some sounds than others as the basis for individuating objects. We propose that these results reflect a processing bias to attend to sounds that reveal something about the physical properties of an object-sounds that are obviously linked to object structure-when determining object identity.

Applications of psychophysical models to the study of auditory development

Psychophysical models of listening, such as the energy detector model, have provided a framework from which to characterize the function of the mature auditory system and to explore how mature listeners make use of auditory information in sound identification. The application of such models to the study of auditory development has similarly provided insight into the characteristics of infant hearing and listening. Infants intensity, frequency, temporal and spatial resolution have been described at least grossly and some contributions of immature listening strategies to infant hearing have been identified. Infants psychoacoustic performance is typically poorer than adults under identical stimulus conditions. However, the infant’s performance typically varies with stimulus condition in a way that is qualitatively similar to the adult’s performance. In some cases, though, infants perform in a qualitatively different way from adults in psychoacoustic experiments. Further, recent psychoacoustic studies of children suggest that the classic models of listening may be inadequate to describe the children’s performance. The characteristics of a model that might be appropriate for the immature listener will be outlined and the implications for models of mature listening will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH grants DC00396 and by DC04661.]

On the use of auditory information in human movement control

A human acting and moving in the environment often produces sounds, which are related to his or her body movements. Movement control requires the continuous use of perceptual information about the ongoing movement. It was investigated whether humans can and do use sound produced by their movements as auditory information for the control of their movements. In the experiments the movements or tasks required from the subjects were varied, as well as the available auditory and visual information. The success in the movement tasks was measured. The results obtained so far show that auditory information is used for movement control by the subjects, especially with complicated movements.

Superior Detection of Audio-Visual Signals over Visual Signals: Are Overt Movements Necessary?

Perrott et al (1990 Perception & Psychophysics48 214 – 226) suggested that the use of auditory information to guide saccadic eye movements may mediate the facilitation of visual search by auditory spatial information. We modified a later paradigm (Perrott et al, 1991 Human Factors33 389 – 400) to re-examine the nature of auditory facilitation for both covert and overt orienting to targets located ±15° from a central fixation point. Participants made a 2AFC response to the orientation of a visual target in each of four conditions: the target was presented (1) alone, or target onset was accompanied by (2) a spatially coincident sound, (3) a centrally located ‘status’ sound, or (4) a change in the fixation point. The auditory stimulus was a 10 Hz click train: the visual target appeared on the left or right of the fixation point at ±15° azimuth and 0° elevation. In experiment 1 foveal vision was necessary to identify the target. However, the stimulus used in subsequent experiments could be accurately identified without overt receptor movement. Subjects were instructed to use eye movements (experiment 2) or to maintain fixation on a central cross throughout the session (experiment 3). Spatial and status sounds had a significant facilitatory effect on target identification both when overt and when covert orienting were employed. This strongly suggests that audio-visual facilitation is not dependent upon overt orienting.

Visually handicapped pedestrians and the sound environment: Developmental change of the use of auditory information

The visually handicapped, who rely on auditory information, are supposed to take the sound environment in greatly different ways than the nonhandicapped. A survey was conducted about the developmental change of the use of auditory information for the visually handicapped. The purpose of this study is to create a better sound environment for the visually handicapped and the nonhandicapped to live in together. Interviews with 13 visually handicapped students (9–18 years old) and 19 visually handicapped adults were conducted to investigate how they use the auditory information. Interviewees who had little experience in walking around could hardly recognize the surrounding space by making use of the auditory information. They seemed to walk and to move in the behavioral patterns using their own specific information. It was found that they actively used the auditory information to avoid danger, for example, sounds from cars. On the other hand, those who had much experience used the auditory information to recognize stores and houses on a street. They used the auditory information to avoid danger unconsciously. In addition, some of them reported that they often had two-dimensional mental maps and put landmarks on the maps using the auditory information.

The influence of vehicle type on the estimation of velocity while driving

Velocity production in the absence of speedometer information was investigated as a function of car size. In the first experiment three vehicles of different sizes were driven by 30 subjects; in the second experiment a different sample of 20 subjects used their own vehicles, which were classified into two size categories. In both experiments subjects were required to drive under conditions of normal and attenuated auditory feedback. The results indicated a greater production accuracy in small compared with large cars and a tendency for drivers of small cars to make greater use of auditory information. The results are discussed in the context of the relative contribution of different sensory channels to the subjective scale of speed.

The Role of Vehicle Characteristics in Drivers' Perception of Automobile Velocity

Velocity production in the absence of speedometer information is investigated as a function of car size. In the first experiment three vehicles of different size were supplied by the experimenters; in experiment two a different sample of drivers used their own vehicles. In both experiments subjects performed under normal and auditory attenuated conditions. Results indicated greater production accuracy in small compared with large cars and a tendency for drivers of small cars to make greater use of auditory information.