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Updated: Jun 22, 2026
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An Automated System for Sound Localization Testing in Hearing-Impaired Listeners
Published on: March 13, 2026
Gaussian-noise discrimination and its relation to auditory object formation.
Tom Goossens1, Steven van de Par, Armin Kohlrausch
1Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. tomgoos@gmail.com
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|June 11, 2009
Summary
Adding noise fringes significantly impairs auditory discrimination of short sound tokens. Spectral and temporal adjustments to the fringe improve discrimination, suggesting object perception is key but not solely sufficient for accurate sound identification.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Psychoacoustics
- Signal processing
Background:
- Human listeners can discriminate short auditory tokens (50 ms) with high accuracy.
- Appending identical noise fringes (200 ms) severely degrades discrimination ability.
- The influence of fringe properties on target discrimination requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if altering fringe properties improves discrimination of target tokens.
- To determine the impact of spectral range, level, interaural level difference (ILD), and interaural time delay (ITD) of fringes on discrimination.
- To explore the relationship between auditory object perception and target discrimination.
Main Methods:
- A same/different experiment assessed discrimination of 50 ms Gaussian-noise tokens.
- 200 ms identical noise fringes were appended to target tokens.
- Fringe properties (spectral range, level, ILD, ITD) were systematically varied.
- A second experiment queried listeners' perception of one versus two auditory objects.
Main Results:
- Spectral and temporal separation of fringes from targets significantly improved discrimination.
- No significant improvement was observed with doubled fringe bandwidth, ±5 dB level changes, or 10 dB ILD.
- Perceiving two auditory objects was necessary but not sufficient for good target discrimination.
Conclusions:
- Auditory object perception is a critical factor in discriminating masked sound targets.
- Specific acoustic manipulations of masking noise (spectral, temporal) can restore discrimination ability.
- Understanding auditory scene analysis is crucial for explaining masking effects in auditory perception.
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