Acute alcohol intoxication and the cocktail party problem: do “mocktails” help or hinder?

Rationale To test the notion that alcohol impairs auditory attentional control by reducing the listener’s cognitive capacity. Objectives We examined the effect of alcohol consumption and working memory span on dichotic speech shadowing and the cocktail party effect—the ability to focus on one of many simultaneous speakers yet still detect mention of one’s name amidst the background speech. Alcohol was expected either to increase name detection, by weakening the inhibition of irrelevant speech, or reduce name detection, by restricting auditory attention on to the primary input channel. Low-span participants were expected to show larger drug impairments than high-span counterparts. Methods On completion of the working memory span task, participants (n = 81) were randomly assigned to an alcohol or placebo beverage treatment. After alcohol absorption, they shadowed speech presented to one ear while ignoring the synchronised speech of a different speaker presented to the other. Each participant’s first name was covertly embedded in to-be-ignored speech. Results The “cocktail party effect” was not affected by alcohol or working memory span, though low-span participants made more shadowing errors and recalled fewer words from the primary channel than high-span counterparts. Bayes factors support a null effect of alcohol on the cocktail party phenomenon, on shadowing errors and on memory for either shadowed or ignored speech. Conclusion Findings suggest that an alcoholic beverage producing a moderate level of intoxication (M BAC ≈ 0.08%) neither enhances nor impairs the cocktail party effect.

SPEAKER DISCRIMINATION IN MULTISOURCE ENVIRONMENTS AURALIZED IN REAL ROOMS

With the recent development of audio in modern VR/AR systems and the increasing capability of synthesizing natural sound fields over headphones with head tracking, the question of the ability of our hearing system to discriminate multiple concurrent sound sources has become important again. We must understand how psychoacoustical and psychophysical limitations of the hearing system cope with novel technologies of virtual acoustics that can simulate an almost unlimited number of sound sources. Previous research has shown that the capacity of human hearing to discriminate a reference sound source is limited when there is background noise, a reverberant surrounding, or when other, disturbing sound sources simultaneously mask the reference source. A set of listening tests based on the cocktail-party effect was designed to determine the intelligibility of speech emitted by a reference sound source, with one to six disturbing sound sources simultaneously emitting speech from different directions around the listener. The tests were repeated in three test rooms with different acoustical properties, and two test signals were used: logatomes and regular spoken sentences with specific keywords. The results have revealed the changes in speech intelligibility scores in relation to the number of disturbing sources, their positions, and acoustical properties of test rooms.

Multichannel acoustic source and image dataset for the cocktail party effect in hearing aid and implant users

The Cocktail Party Effect refers to the ability of the human sense of hearing to extract a specific target sound source from a mixture of background noises in complex acoustic scenarios. The ease with which normal hearing people perform this challenging task is in stark contrast to the difficulties that hearing-impaired subjects face in these situations. To help patients with hearing aids and implants, scientists are trying to imitate this ability of human hearing, with modest success so far. To support the scientific community in its efforts, we provide the Bern Cocktail Party (BCP) dataset consisting of 55938 Cocktail Party scenarios recorded from 20 people and a head and torso simulator wearing cochlear implant audio processors. The data were collected in an acoustic chamber with 16 synchronized microphones placed at purposeful positions on the participants’ heads. In addition to the multi-channel audio source and image recordings, the spatial coordinates of the microphone positions were digitized for each participant. Python scripts were provided to facilitate data processing.

PEMISAHAN SUARA TERCAMPUR BERDASARKAN KARAKTERISTIK BINAURAL

Dalam suatu percakapan di pesta cocktail, seseorang mampu memfokuskan pendengarannya pada seorang lawan bicaranya meskipun bunyi musik latar cukup keras dan disertai percakapan beberapa orang lainnya. Fenomena ini dikenal dengan the cocktail party effect. Dalam sebuah studi awal dijelaskan bahwa binaural hearing memberikan kontribusi penting dalam efek tersebut. Penelitian tentang pemisahan suara yang berdasarkan pada lokalisasi bunyi telah dilakukan sebelumnya. Pada penelitian tersebut, pemisahan suara tercampur hanya berdasarkan binaural cue - interaural time difference. Maka pada penelitian ini, akan dilakukan pemisahan suara dari input binaural dengan 2 sensor mikrofon dari dua sumber suara berdasarkan kedua binaural cue tersebut yaitu interaural time difference (ITD) dan interaural level difference (ILD) menggunakan binary mask. Untuk mengestimasi nilai ITD, digunakan metode cross-correlation yang nilai ITD direpresentasikan sebagai nilai time delay pada pergeseran peak pada unit time-frequency. Binary mask diestimasi berdasarkan pola perubahan nilai interaural time difference dan interaural level difference terhadap nilai relative strength dari sinyal target yang dihitung secara statistik menggunakan probability density estimation. Hasil pemisahan sumber suara tercampur menunjukkan performa yang baik dengan SNR sebesar 3 dB.

Gatecrashing the visual cocktail party: How visual and semantic similarity modulate the own name benefit in the attentional blink

The “visual cocktail party effect” refers to superior report of a participant’s own name, under conditions of inattention. An early selection account suggests this advantage stems from enhanced visual processing. A late selection account suggests the advantage occurs when semantic information allowing identification as one’s own name is retrieved. In the context of inattentional blindness (IB), Mack and Rock showed that the advantage does not generalise to a minor modification of a participant’s own name, despite extensive visual similarity, supporting the late selection account. This study applied the name modification manipulation in the context of the attentional blink (AB). Participants were presented with rapid streams of names and identified a white target name, while also reporting the presence of one of two possible probes. The probe names appeared either close (the third item following the target: Lag 3) or far in time from the target (the eighth item following the target: Lag 8). The results revealed a robust AB; reports of the probe were reduced at Lag 3 relative to Lag 8. The AB was also greatly reduced for the own name compared to another name—a visual cocktail party effect. In contrast to the findings of Mack and Rock for IB, the reduced AB extended to the modified own name. The results suggest different loci for the visual cocktail party effect in the AB (word recognition) compared to IB (semantic processing).

Properties and Preparation of High Entropy Alloys

As a consequence of multi-components, the high entropy alloys embodied serious cocktail party effect and lattice distortion. So high entropy alloys have high strength and hardness possess many comprehensive properties such as thermostability and corrosion resistance. Because of excellent mechanical properties and chemical properties, high entropy alloys have immeasurable potential of development. This paper mainly introduces the properties, preparations and applications of high entropy alloys, and finally summarizes them.