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Related Experiment Videos

Informational masking by everyday sounds.

E L Oh1, R A Lutfi

  • 1Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53705, USA.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|January 1, 2000
PubMed
Summary

Informational masking, caused by sparse noise sampling, affects tone detection. Everyday sounds also cause masking, but less so when easily recognized, suggesting listeners don't exploit sound regularities unless the sound is identifiable.

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Area of Science:

  • Auditory perception
  • Psychoacoustics
  • Signal detection theory

Background:

  • Tone-in-noise detection is impaired by uncertainty from sparse noise sampling, termed informational masking.
  • Previous research established informational masking effects with random noise components.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate informational masking using common everyday sounds instead of noise.
  • To determine if sound recognition influences informational masking.

Main Methods:

  • Masked thresholds for a 1.0-kHz signal were measured using adaptive procedures.
  • Maskers were synthesized from a variable number of spectral components (2-921) from either Gaussian noise or 50 everyday sounds.
  • Listener ratings of sound recognition were collected.

Main Results:

  • Results with noise replicated prior findings, showing peak masking with 10-20 components.
  • Everyday sounds produced similar masking patterns but up to 10 dB greater than noise for larger component numbers.
  • Less masking occurred for everyday sounds rated as easily recognized, a finding not predicted by spectral variance models.

Conclusions:

  • Listeners exhibit informational masking with everyday sounds, similar to noise.
  • Listeners do not leverage inherent spectral regularities in everyday sounds for detection unless the sound is easily identifiable.
  • Sound recognition plays a crucial role in mitigating informational masking effects.

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