Auditory Attention Hearing in Rooms Segregation Auditory Displays Modeling Plasticity

Segregation
In everyday settings, the sound reaching the ears is a mixture of energy from different sources. One of the major problems facing a listener is determing what sound energy comes from what source. Spatial cues help in this process, especially when considering how elements of sound are connected across time. We are investigating how spatial hearing influences the perceptual organization of sound in both simple environments (without echoes) and more natural, complex environments (in which there are echoes). This work has important practical applications as many hearing-impaired and/or aged listeners have difficulty understanding a source of interest when there are echoes and competing sounds in the environment.

Recent Papers on Source Segregation

Lee, AKC, S Babcock, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Measuring the perceived content of auditory objects using a matching paradigm,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, in press.

Lee, AKC and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Effects of frequency disparities on trading of an ambiguous tone between two competing auditory objects,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, in press.

Ihlefeld, A and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Spatial release from energetic and informational masking in a selective speech identification task,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, in press.

Ihlefeld, A and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Spatial release from energetic and informational masking in a divided speech identification task,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, in press.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2008). "Object-based auditory and visual attention," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 182-186.

Lee, AKC and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Effects of reverberant spatial cues on attention-dependent object formation,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 9, 150-160.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG and D Wang (2008). “Influences of auditory object formation on phonemic restoration,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121, 295-301.

Narayan, R, V Best, EJ Ozmeral, BG Shinn-Cunningham, and K Sen (2007). “Cortical interference effects in the cocktail party problem,” Nature Neuroscience, 10(12), 1601-1607 (with supplementary material).

Shinn-Cunningham, BG and D Wang (in press). “Auditory object formation influences speech understanding,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG, AKC Lee, and AJ Oxenham (2007). “Auditory non-allocation of a sound element lost in perceptual competition,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 104, 12223-12227. (supplement)

Best, V, F Gallun, S Carlile, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2007). “Binaural interference and auditory grouping,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.Best, 121, 1070-1076.

Best, V, EJ Ozmeral, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2007). “Visually guided attention enhances target identification in a complex auditory scene,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 8(2), 294-304.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2007). “Why hearing impairment may degrade selective attention,” Proceedings of the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research, Helsingør, Denmark, 29-31 August 2007.

Best, V, A Ihlefeld, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2007). “Divided listening in auditory displays,” Proceedings of the International Congress on Acoustics, Madrid, Spain, 2-7 September 2007

Best, V, FJ Gallun, A Ihlefeld, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2006). "The influence of spatial separation on divided listening," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America," 120, 1506-1516.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG, V Best, ML Dent, FJ Gallun, E McClaine, R Narayan, E Ozmeral, and K Sen (2006). “Behavioral and neural identification of birdsong under several masking conditions,” Proc. of the International Symposium on Hearing, Cloppenberg, Germany.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG, A Ihlefeld, Satyavarta, and E Larson (2005). “Bottom-up and top-down influences on spatial unmasking,” Acta Acustica united with Acustica. 91, 967-979.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2005). “Influences of spatial cues on grouping and understanding sound,” Proceedings of the Forum Acusticum, 29 August - 2 September 2005.

Durlach, NI, CR Mason, FJ Gallun, BG Shinn-Cunningham, HS Colburn, and G Kidd, Jr. (2005). “Informational masking for simultaneous nonspeech stimuli: Psychometric functions for fixed and randomly mixed maskers,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118(4), 2482-2497.

Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2004). “The perceptual consequences of creating a realistic, reverberant 3-D audio display,” Proceedings of the International Congress on Acoustics, Kyoto, Japan, 4-9 April 2004.

Kopco, N, and Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2003). "Spatial unmasking of nearby pure-tone targets in a simulated anechoic environment," J Acoust Soc Am, 114, 2856-2870.

Durlach, NI, CR Mason, BG Shinn-Cunningham, TL Arbogast, HS Colburn, and G Kidd, Jr. (2003). "Informational masking: Counteracting the effects of stimulus uncertainty by decreasing target-masker similarity," J Acoust Soc Am, 114, 368-379.

Durlach, NI, CR Mason, G Kidd, Jr., TL Arbogast, HS Colburn, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2003). "Note on informational masking," J Acoust Soc Am, 113, 2984-2987.