Auditory Behavioral Research Lab
ABRL News
January 2024
Gabriella Brown (undergraduate, mentor: Dr. Jungmee Lee) received a 2024 College of
Behavioral & Community Sciences Undergraduate Research Scholarship Award!
December 2023
Dr. Jungmee Lee got elected as a fellow of Acoustical Society of America
January 2023
Sarah Grover got a travel award from the American Auditory Society (AAS) to present her research present her research under the Resident and Graduate Student Mentored Reasearch Poster Session. The title of her research poster was "Envelope Following Response Partly Explains Individual Differences in Cocktail-party Effect."
Abstract: Young listeners with clinically normal hearing show large variability in their ability to segregate the speech of multiple talkers speaking simultaneously, the so-called cocktail-party effect (CPE, Cherry, 1952). Lutfi et al. (2020) used perturbation analysis (Berg, 1990) to evaluate two general factors thought to be responsible for the individual differences: decision weights 鈥� the relative reliance listeners place on individual segregation cues, and internal noise 鈥� degradations in the internal representation of segregation cues resulting from stochastic neural processes. The authors concluded that individual differences in performance in their experiments were mainly due to internal noise, but they did not consider the source of the internal noise. The present study evaluated Envelope Following Responses (EFR) using rectangular wave, amplitude-modulated (RAM) at 40 and 120 Hz to measure possible contributions of the cortex and midbrain to internal noise in a CPE task similar to that of Lutfi et al. (2020).
June 2022
Dr. Jungmee Lee got invited to give a talk at Korean Otological Society.
January 2022
Lindsey Kummerer got a travel award from the American Auditory Society (AAS) to present her research present her research under the Resident and Graduate Student Mentored Reasearch Poster Session. The title of her research poster was "Possible Contribution of the Cochlea to Individual Differences in a Speech-in-Noise Task, Measured by Stimulus Frequency Otoacoustic Emissions."
Abstract:
There is large variation in performance on speech-in-noise (SIN) tasks among individuals with normal audiometric thresholds (Killion, 2002). Cochlear pathology missed by standard audiometric evaluation has not been ruled out as a possible cause for this variation (Plack et al., 2014). A more sensitive measure than audiometric thresholds for assessing the presence of cochlear pathology may be the fine structure of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). The fine structure of OAEs, given by the peaks and dips in the magnitude of OAEs measured in fine frequency steps, has been shown to provide an early indicator of cochlear pathology (Ellison & Keefe, 2005; Engdahl & Kemp, 1996; Abdala et al., 2019; Kalluri and Shera, 2013) and to be predictive of performance in a variety of supra-threshold auditory tasks (Mauermann et al., 2004; Lee et al., 2016; Stiepan et al. 2020). The present study used stimulus-frequency OAEs (SFOAEs) to evaluate possible cochlear contributions to individual differences in SIN performance for 22 young adults. A relationship was found between QuickSIN scores and the signal-to-noise ratio of SFOAE fine structure, contrary to findings by Stiepan et al. (2020), where they found a relationship between QuickSIN scores and noise floor. Our results suggest that reduced function of outer hair cells contributes to increased difficulty in SIN for clinically normal hearing listeners, not physiological noise.
[Supported by NIDCD R01-DC001262-26].
December 2021
Briana Rodriguez got a travel award from the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) to present a paper "Talker identification based on covariance in voicing cues" at the 45th annual conference on San Jose, CA on Feb 5-9, 2022.
Conference website:
December 2019
John Sheets got 2020 travel award from American Auditory Society (AAS) to present his research under "Resident and Graduate Student Mentored Research Poster Session". The conference will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Scottsdale Resort (formerly the Chaparral Suites Scottsdale) from March 5 - 7, 2020.
Conference website:
December 2019
Kelly Smith's abstract was accepted for American Academy of Audiology (AAA) 2020/HearTech Expo which will be held on April 1 - 4, 2020 in New Orleans.
Conference website:
November, 2019
Dr. Robert Lutfi and Dr. Jungmee Lee got invited to give talks at a session "Individual differences in auditory processing" during FORUM ACUSTICUM 2020, Lyon, France.
conference website:
July, 2019
Robert Lutfi, PhD (PI), Jungmee Lee, PhD (Co-I) and Ann Eddins, PhD (Co-I) have received a $2,386,000 grant from the The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) for a five year project entitled "Individual Differences Listening in Noise in Clinically Normal-hearing Adults".
July 25, 26, 2019
John Sheets and Briana Rodriguez presented their research at Knowles Conference, Northwestern University on July 25 & 26, 2019.
Conference information:
May 16, 2019
Briana Rodriguez presented a poster, "Synergy of Spectral and Spatial Segregation Cues in Simulated Cocktail Party Listening" by Briana Rodriguez, Jungmee Lee & Robert Lutfi at the 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Louisville, KY, USA on May 16, 2019, in session 4aPP, Spatial Hearing, Complex Acoustic Scenes, and Clinical Devices (Poster Session).
ASA meeting information:
Abstract:
An approach is borrowed from Measurement Theory [Krantz et al. (1971). Foundations
of Measurement, Vol.1] to evaluate the interaction of spectral and spatial cues in
the segregation of talkers in
simulated cocktail-party listening. The goal is to determine whether mathematical
transformations exist
whereby the combined effect of cues can be additively related to their individual
effects. On each trial, the
listener judged whether an interleaved sequence of 4 vowel triplets (heard over headphones)
were spoken by
the same BBB_BBB鈥� or different ABA_ABA鈥� talkers. The talkers had nominally different
fundamental
frequencies and spoke from nominally different locations (simulated using Kemar HRTFs).
Natural variation in
these cues was simulated by adding a small, random perturbation to the nominal values
independently for
each vowel on each trial. Psychometric functions (PFs) relating d鈥� performance to
the difference in nominal
values were obtained for the cues presented individually and in combination. The results
revealed a synergistic
interaction of cues wherein the PFs for cues presented in combination exceeded the
simple vector sum of the
PFs for the cues presented individually. The results are discussed in terms of their
implications for possible
emergent properties of cues affecting performance in simulated cocktail-party listening.
[Supported by NIDCD
R01-DC001262].
Feburary 5, 2019
Dr. Lutfi is invited to give a talk at a special session, "Applications of Signal Detection Theory in Perception and Physiology," at the 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Louisville, KY, USA on May 16, 2019.
Abstract:
Cocktail-party listening (CPL) is a key-term referring to difficult listening situations
wherein one must 鈥榟ear out鈥� and follow the speech of individual talkers in a crowd.
Such situations are
commonplace in everyday listening but can be a challenge to study. Important factors
affecting performance,
such as voice similarity among talkers and uncertainty associated with the dynamic
variation of speech, can be
difficult to quantify. Spectral and spatial acoustic cues distinguishing talkers are
of critical importance but are
expressed in different physical units making their relative role difficult to evaluate
beyond the particulars of a
study. There are also often huge individual differences in listener performance that
can complicate the
interpretation of results. This paper reviews recent applications of detection theory
designed to address these
challenges. The distinguishing feature of the approach is that key factors are evaluated
in terms of their
contribution to the information divergence of talkers, D ; a single statistic that
dictates optimal performance for
each task [Lutfi et al. (2013), J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 134:2160-2170]. Both published
and unpublished studies are
reviewed demonstrating the application of the approach to each of the major challenges
described above.
[Research supported by NIDCD R01-DC001262].
March 21, 2018
Drs. Lutfi and Lee got invited to give a talk at the 18th International Symposium on Hearing in Snekkersten, Denmark, from June 10-15, 2018. The topic of ISH 2018 is "Hearing: Psychophysics, Physiology, and Models".
ISH 2018 meeting website:
Abstract:
A simulated 鈥榗ocktail-party鈥� listening experiment was conducted to determine the relative
role of decision weights
and internal noise in accounting for the large individual differences in performance
typically observed in these
experiments. The listener heard over headphones interleaved sequences of random vowels
and were asked to
judge on each trial whether the vowels were spoken by the same BBB or different ABA
talkers. The A and B
vowels had nominally different fundamental frequency (F0) and spatial position (simulated
using Kemar HRTFs),
but were randomly perturbed around these values on each presentation. Decision weights
for each dimension,
internal noise, and efficiency measures were estimated using COSS analysis [1]. J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 88 149鈥�
158. Decision weights differed across listeners, but weighting efficiency was quite
similar. Individual differences
in performance accuracy ranging over 40 percentage points were largely related to
differences in internal noise.
The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the relative role of
sensory and attentional factors
affecting individual performance differences in simulated cocktail party listening
[Research supported by NIDCD R01-DC001262].
Robert Lutfi., Alison Tan, and Jungmee Lee. (2018). 鈥淢odeling individual differences in cocktail-party listening鈥�, Acta Acustica united with Acustica, 104, 787-791