Journal article
Auditory intensity discrimination as a function of level-rove and tone duration in normal-hearing and impaired subjects: The “mid-level hump” revisited
Hearing research, v 253(1), pp 107-115
Jul 2009
PMID: 19345257
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
The just-noticeable difference (ΔI) in the intensity (I) of sound is typically reported to be a constant or a slightly decreasing ratio of the baseline intensity (known as Weber’s law, and the “near-miss to Weber’s law”, respectively). However, in the relatively few studies on the intensity discrimination of very brief sounds, ΔI/I is usually found to be non-monotonic, with poorest discrimination in the middle of the auditory dynamic range. Here, it is demonstrated that this “severe departure from Weber’s law” or “mid-level hump” is not merely a phenomenon of short-duration sounds. In normal-hearing subjects (
n
=
8), the near-miss to Weber’s law that is observed with the discrimination of 300
ms-long, 4
kHz tones, gives way to a significant mid-level hump if tone intensities are not fixed over a great many trials (as is standard practice) but are instead randomly roved, trial-to-trial, over a wide intensity range. This was not the case in subjects with mild to moderate hearing impairment (
n
=
4). Furthermore, in the discrimination of widely-roved, 4
ms-long, 4
kHz tone bursts, the performance of normal-hearing subjects did not significantly worsen at mid-levels compared to the unroved condition, unlike what was found with the 300
ms-long tones. It is suggested that mid-level humps could simply be the product of the well-known mid-level compressive nonlinearity in cochlear mechanics. We further suggest that the hump is eliminated, and the near-miss to Weber’s law is produced, by a more central mechanism such as the recently reported “adaptation to sound-level statistics”, which is bypassed during wide-range roving and possibly when sound durations are brief.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Auditory intensity discrimination as a function of level-rove and tone duration in normal-hearing and impaired subjects: The “mid-level hump” revisited
- Creators
- Martin Pienkowski - University of CalgaryBjorn Hagerman - Karolinska Institutet
- Publication Details
- Hearing research, v 253(1), pp 107-115
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Number of pages
- 9
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Audiology - 4 Year
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000268079100012
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-67349280361
- Other Identifier
- 991022025318204721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Audiology & Speech-language Pathology
- Neurosciences
- Otorhinolaryngology