Self-masking: Listening during vocalization. Normal hearing

What underlying mechanisms are involved in the ability to talk and listen simultaneously and what role does self-masking play under conditions of hearing impairment? The purpose of the present series of studies is to describe a technique for assessment of masked thresholds during vocalization, to de...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2009-06, Vol.125 (6), p.3871-3881
Main Authors: BORG, Erik, BERGKVIST, Christina, GUSTAFSSON, Dan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Audition
Auditory Perception
Biological and medical sciences
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Perception
Perceptual Masking
Psychoacoustics
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Regression Analysis
Reproducibility of Results
Sex Characteristics
Speech
Speech Acoustics
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:What underlying mechanisms are involved in the ability to talk and listen simultaneously and what role does self-masking play under conditions of hearing impairment? The purpose of the present series of studies is to describe a technique for assessment of masked thresholds during vocalization, to describe normative data for males and females, and to focus on hearing impairment. The masking effect of vocalized [a:] on narrow-band noise pulses (250-8000 Hz) was studied using the maximum vocalization method. An amplitude-modulated series of sound pulses, which sounded like a steam engine, was masked until the criterion of halving the perceived pulse rate was reached. For masking of continuous reading, a just-follow-conversation criterion was applied. Intra-session test-retest reproducibility and inter-session variability were calculated. The results showed that female voices were more efficient in masking high frequency noise bursts than male voices and more efficient in masking both a male and a female test reading. The male had to vocalize 4 dBA louder than the female to produce the same masking effect on the test reading. It is concluded that the method is relatively simple to apply and has small intra-session and fair inter-session variability. Interesting gender differences were observed.
ISSN:0001-4966
1520-8524
DOI:10.1121/1.3124773