Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, July 2011, Volume 130, pages 501-7.
Previous studies have assessed the importance of temporal fine structure (TFS) for speech perception in noise by comparing the performance of normal-hearing listeners in two conditions. In one condition, the stimuli have useful information in both their temporal envelopes and their TFS. In the other condition, stimuli are vocoded and contain useful information only in their temporal envelopes. Full abstract
Previous studies have assessed the importance of temporal fine structure (TFS) for speech perception in noise by comparing the performance of normal-hearing listeners in two conditions. In one condition, the stimuli have useful information in both their temporal envelopes and their TFS. In the other condition, stimuli are vocoded and contain useful information only in their temporal envelopes. However, these studies have confounded differences in TFS with differences in the temporal envelope. The present study manipulated the analytic signal of stimuli to preserve the temporal envelope between conditions with different TFS. The inclusion of informative TFS improved speech-reception thresholds for sentences presented in steady and modulated noise, demonstrating that there are significant benefits of including informative TFS even when the temporal envelope is controlled. It is likely that the results of previous studies largely reflect the benefits of TFS, rather than uncontrolled effects of changes in the temporal envelope. PubMed entry
My research focuses on the roles of attention and cognition in listening to what one person is saying when many people are speaking at the same time and how those roles may change as we age. I use MEG and EEG in combination with MRI to examine the location and timecourse of neuronal activity during multi-talker listening. I have developed a low-cost apparatus for conducting research on spatial listening by adults and children who use cochlear implants.
I am a scientist living in Nottingham, UK. I am a senior research fellow in cochlear implantation at the NIHR Nottingham Hearing Biomedical Research Unit. I am also a musician, a photographer, and a programmer.