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Adaptive auditory brightness perception.
Kai Siedenburg1, Feline Malin Barg2, Henning Schepker2,3
1Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany. kai.siedenburg@uol.de.
Scientific Reports
|November 3, 2021
Summary
Auditory brightness perception adapts to prior sound exposure, showing contrastive effects in real-world listening scenarios. This adaptation occurs rapidly, within short-term memory timescales.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Perception
- Psychoacoustics
- Sensory Adaptation
Background:
- Perception adjusts to prior stimulation, seen in vision (color constancy) and speech.
- Auditory brightness adaptation mechanisms are less understood.
- Investigating adaptation to spectral coloration in naturalistic sounds is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test if listeners adapt their auditory brightness judgments to spectral colorations.
- To examine the time course and characteristics of auditory brightness adaptation.
- To compare adaptation effects from different spectral filtering methods.
Main Methods:
- Listeners judged auditory brightness after exposure to music and speech excerpts with spectral filtering.
- Adaptation was measured on a trial-by-trial basis.
- A simple model of response criterion was used to analyze data.
Main Results:
- Consistent contrastive adaptation of auditory brightness judgments was observed.
- Adaptation effects increased with adaptor duration, leveling off around 8 trials (2s each).
- Adaptation effects were similar for linear spectral filters and hearing device transfer functions.
Conclusions:
- Auditory brightness perception demonstrates significant adaptivity under realistic acoustic conditions.
- Adaptation occurs on timescales consistent with auditory short-term memory.
- Findings support the dynamic nature of auditory perception and have implications for hearing device design.
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