Developmental Patterns of Duration Discrimination

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 842-849 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill L. Elfenbein ◽  
Arnold M. Small ◽  
Julia M. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Standard Stimulus ◽  
Discrimination Performance ◽  
Noise Burst ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Broadband Noise ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Perceptual Abilities

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the auditory perceptual abilities of children are characterized by an age-related improvement in duration discrimination. Forty children, ages 4 to 10 years, and 10 adults served as subjects. Difference limens were obtained using a 350-msec broadband noise burst as the standard stimulus in a three-interval forcedchoice paradigm. Data were characterized by significant differences between the performances of the 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds and those of the adults. Acquisition of adult-like discrimination performance was demonstrated between the ages of 8 and 10 years.

Age-Related Decline in Emotional Prosody Discrimination

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel L. C. Mitchell ◽  
Rachel A. Kingston
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Pitch Perception ◽  
Sensory Level ◽  
Emotional Prosody ◽  
Processing Stage ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Level Of Processing

It is now accepted that older adults have difficulty recognizing prosodic emotion cues, but it is not clear at what processing stage this ability breaks down. We manipulated the acoustic characteristics of tones in pitch, amplitude, and duration discrimination tasks to assess whether impaired basic auditory perception coexisted with our previously demonstrated age-related prosodic emotion perception impairment. It was found that pitch perception was particularly impaired in older adults, and that it displayed the strongest correlation with prosodic emotion discrimination. We conclude that an important cause of age-related impairment in prosodic emotion comprehension exists at the fundamental sensory level of processing.

Investigating Age-Related Differences in Spatial Presence in Virtual Reality

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1782-1786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean A. McGlynn ◽  
Ranjani M. Sundaresan ◽  
Wendy A. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Psychological Aspects ◽  
Spatial Presence ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Perceptual Abilities

Virtual reality (VR) has potential applications for promoting physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional well-being for users of all ages. The ability for individuals to develop a sense of being physically located in the virtual environment, referred to as spatial presence, is often an essential component of successful VR applications. Thus, it is necessary to understand the psychological aspects of the spatial presence process and identify methods of measuring presence formation and maintenance. This in-progress study addresses gaps in the spatial presence literature through an empirical evaluation of a conceptual model of spatial presence, which emphasizes users’ characteristics and abilities. Age will serve as a proxy for changes in a variety of presence-relevant cognitive and perceptual abilities. The results will have implications for the design of VR systems and applications and for selecting individuals best-suited for these applications.

scholarly journals Specific loss of neural sensitivity to interaural time difference of unmodulated noise stimuli following noise-induced hearing loss

2020 ◽  
Vol 124 (4) ◽  
pp. 1165-1182
Author(s):  
Hariprakash Haragopal ◽  
Ryan Dorkoski ◽  
Austin R. Pollard ◽  
Gareth A. Whaley ◽  
Timothy R. Wohl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Interaural Time Difference ◽  
Acoustic Trauma ◽  
Sound Level ◽  
Broadband Noise ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Auditory Midbrain ◽  
Midbrain Neurons ◽  
Perceptual Abilities ◽  
Encode Time

Sensorineural hearing loss compromises perceptual abilities that arise from hearing with two ears, yet its effects on binaural aspects of neural responses are largely unknown. We found that, following severe hearing loss because of acoustic trauma, auditory midbrain neurons specifically lost the ability to encode time differences between the arrival of a broadband noise stimulus to the two ears, whereas the encoding of sound level differences between the two ears remained uncompromised.

Profile of Auditory Temporal Processing in Older Listeners

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Gordon-Salant ◽  
Peter J. Fitzgibbons
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Age Effects ◽  
Complex Stimulus ◽  
Auditory Temporal Processing ◽  
Compressed Speech ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Performance Patterns ◽  
Reverberant Speech

This investigation examined age-related performance differences on a range of speech and nonspeech measures involving temporal manipulation of acoustic signals and variation of stimulus complexity. The goal was to identify a subset of temporally mediated measures that effectively distinguishes the performance patterns of younger and older listeners, with and without hearing loss. The nonspeech measures included duration discrimination for simple tones and gaps, duration discrimination for tones and gaps embedded within complex sequences, and discrimination of temporal order. The speech measures were undistorted speech, time-compressed speech, reverberant speech, and combined time-compressed + reverberant speech. All speech measures were presented both in quiet and in noise. Strong age effects were observed for the nonspeech measures, particularly in the more complex stimulus conditions. Additionally, age effects were observed for all time-compressed speech conditions and some reverberant speech conditions, in both quiet and noise. Effects of hearing loss were observed also for the speech measures only. Discriminant function analysis derived a formula, based on a subset of these measures, for classifying individuals according to temporal performance consistent with age and hearing loss categories. The most important measures to accomplish this goal involved conditions featuring temporal manipulations of complex speech and nonspeech signals.

scholarly journals Simultaneous mnemonic and predictive representations in the auditory cortex

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Drew Cappotto ◽  
HiJee Kang ◽  
Kongyan Li ◽  
Lucia Melloni ◽  
Jan Schnupp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Time Windows ◽  
Noise Burst ◽  
Broadband Noise ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Memory Encoding ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Neural Populations ◽  
Predictive Mechanisms

AbstractRecent studies have shown that stimulus history can be decoded via the use of broadband sensory impulses to reactivate mnemonic representations. It has also been shown that predictive mechanisms in the auditory system demonstrate similar tonotopic organization of neural activity as that elicited by the perceived stimuli. However, it remains unclear if the mnemonic and predictive information can be decoded from cortical activity simultaneously and from overlapping neural populations. Here, we recorded neural activity using electrocorticography (ECoG) in the auditory cortex of anesthetized rats while exposed to repeated stimulus sequences, where events within the sequence were occasionally replaced with a broadband noise burst or omitted entirely. We show that both stimulus history and predicted stimuli can be decoded from neural responses to broadband impulse at overlapping latencies but linked to largely independent neural populations. We also demonstrate that predictive representations are learned over the course of stimulation at two distinct time scales, reflected in two dissociable time windows of neural activity. These results establish a valuable tool for investigating the neural mechanisms of passive sequence learning, memory encoding, and prediction mechanisms within a single paradigm, and provide novel evidence for learning predictive representations even under anaesthesia.

Factors affecting gap duration discrimination performance

2005 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 2535-2535
Author(s):  
John H. Grose ◽  
Joseph W. Hall ◽  
Emily Buss
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Performance ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Factors Affecting

scholarly journals Developmental perspectives on risky and impulsive choice

2018 ◽  
Vol 374 (1766) ◽  
pp. 20180133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail M. Rosenbaum ◽  
Catherine A. Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Risk Taking ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Impulsive Choice ◽  
Choice Behaviour ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Changes In Risk ◽  
Task Parameters

Epidemiological data suggest that risk taking in the real world increases from childhood into adolescence and declines into adulthood. However, developmental patterns of behaviour in laboratory assays of risk taking and impulsive choice are inconsistent. In this article, we review a growing literature using behavioural economic approaches to understand developmental changes in risk taking and impulsivity. We present findings that have begun to elucidate both the cognitive and neural processes that contribute to risky and impulsive choice, as well as how age-related changes in these neurocognitive processes give rise to shifts in choice behaviour. We highlight how variability in task parameters can be used to identify specific aspects of decision contexts that may differentially influence risky and impulsive choice behaviour across development. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Risk taking and impulsive behaviour: fundamental discoveries, theoretical perspectives and clinical implications’.

Neuro-Behavioral Correlates of Post-Deviance Distraction in Middle-Aged and Old Adults

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Getzmann ◽  
Michael Falkenstein ◽  
Patrick D. Gajewski
Keyword(s):  
Standard Stimulus ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Deviant Stimulus ◽  
Behavioral Correlates ◽  
Old Adults ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Middle Aged Adults

The presentation of a task-irrelevant deviant (novel) stimulus among otherwise repeated standard stimuli usually reduces performance not only for the deviant stimulus, but also for the standard following that deviant. Here, the so-called post-deviance distraction was investigated in 58 middle-aged and 52 old adults, using an auditory duration discrimination task and event-related potential (ERP) measures. After a deviant stimulus, the participants showed a decrease in performance in the subsequent standard stimulus. This effect was more pronounced in the old, than middle-aged, group. Relative to the standard stimuli preceding the deviant, post-deviant standards triggered a chain of mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and reorienting negativity (RON). While MMN and P3a did not differ in old and middle-aged adults, older participants showed a delayed RON. Assuming the RON to reflect processes of general task or feature reconfiguration and updating, these results suggest a delay in orienting-reorienting mechanisms as possible source of increased post-deviance distraction in elderly.

scholarly journals Diverse cortical codes for scene segmentation in primate auditory cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (7) ◽  
pp. 2934-2952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Malone ◽  
Brian H. Scott ◽  
Malcolm N. Semple
Keyword(s):  
Spike Train ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Rhesus Macaques ◽  
Discrimination Performance ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Cortical Response ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Amplitude Fluctuations

The temporal coherence of amplitude fluctuations is a critical cue for segmentation of complex auditory scenes. The auditory system must accurately demarcate the onsets and offsets of acoustic signals. We explored how and how well the timing of onsets and offsets of gated tones are encoded by auditory cortical neurons in awake rhesus macaques. Temporal features of this representation were isolated by presenting otherwise identical pure tones of differing durations. Cortical response patterns were diverse, including selective encoding of onset and offset transients, tonic firing, and sustained suppression. Spike train classification methods revealed that many neurons robustly encoded tone duration despite substantial diversity in the encoding process. Excellent discrimination performance was achieved by neurons whose responses were primarily phasic at tone offset and by those that responded robustly while the tone persisted. Although diverse cortical response patterns converged on effective duration discrimination, this diversity significantly constrained the utility of decoding models referenced to a spiking pattern averaged across all responses or averaged within the same response category. Using maximum likelihood-based decoding models, we demonstrated that the spike train recorded in a single trial could support direct estimation of stimulus onset and offset. Comparisons between different decoding models established the substantial contribution of bursts of activity at sound onset and offset to demarcating the temporal boundaries of gated tones. Our results indicate that relatively few neurons suffice to provide temporally precise estimates of such auditory “edges,” particularly for models that assume and exploit the heterogeneity of neural responses in awake cortex.

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