Greetings All, I’ve much enjoyed the recent post, particularly Dr. Peter L’s comments regarding “auditory looming” and the like. Not too long back I took a psychology class (yep, still a student) on perception. But unlike the perception classes I had in the past, there was very little emphasis on the peripheral organs, brain, or anatomy. Instead, the emphasis was on Ecological Psychology. This was a new topic for me, and gave me a new way of considering how we see (or hear) in the world.
I was already hell-bent on creating real-world stimuli for research, and Ecological Psychology (EP) provided further motivation to test man in a “natural” environment. (One of EP’s premises is that man and his environment are inseparable pairs). Much of the work in EP has been geared toward vision, but proponents of EP (notably Gaver) have written on the topic of hearing as it applies to EP, animals and their environments. I recently happened upon a EP-related paper authored by R. L. Jenison titled On Acoustic Information for Motion. What occurred to me as being potentially important for hearing aid (HA) users is point-to-contact as it applies to audio. Assessing one’s ability to read 5-word sentences in a background of pink noise probably won’t tell us how a HA user “feels” while standing on a street corner. How a person feels about his/her HA, or, more importantly, how the HA makes the person feel (nervous, confident, energized, afraid, etc.) will likely determine a person’s motivation for continued HA use. Rendering is one way of creating convincing illusions (particularly along side video), but the subtle cues that are absent in all but the most complex of models may be insufficient to tell how one feels about a particular device. It is for this reason I wished to record a few real-world scenarios that are free of assumptions or built-in (exaggerated) cues. I have chosen live recordings via Ambisonics. The subtle cues that are easily ignored by the normal-hearing listener may important to those who have sensory impairments. I don’t need stimuli that are “cluttered” with sounds coming from all directions, but I do wish to include naturally occurring (3D) reverberation and motion. Signal-to-reverberation ratio provides cues as to a source’s distance and whether it is receding or moving towards us. Other cues are available as well (Doppler shift or Doppler illusion, level changes, rate of level change (as it might affect pitch perception), diffraction patterns, etc). Not everybody, however, may be able to use the “obvious” cues and may, instead, rely more heavily on the more subtle cues. Add to this compression and (possibly) frequency transposition of hearing devices, and many available cues become distorted or lost. I suppose what I’ve hoped to avoid in my research design is putting psychoacoustics on top of psychoacoustics; that is, avoid using stimuli that was designed based on assumptions as to how we hear. I want to observe or measure behaviors and feelings in natural space, and how HA processing can affect these behaviors and feelings. I wrote a paper (Ecological Considerations for Cochlear Implant Research) for the aforementioned psychology class, and the topic of surround sound is included (this was roughly the time I began reading about Auralization and Ambisonics). Anyone interested in reading and scrutinizing the paper can find it here: http://www.cochlearconcepts.com/eric_articles/ecological_considerations.pdf An accompanying PowerPoint to the paper can be found here: http://www.cochlearconcepts.com/powerpoints/psy591_ecarmich.pps I’ve come a long way with my ideas since the time I wrote the paper. As always, I appreciate the help, corrections, and feedback from all Sursound Digest contributors... your insights are always welcome. Best, Eric C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130226/9b1f9338/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
