Auditory Scene Analysis with Complex Sounds

复杂声音的听觉场景分析

• 批准号: 9759900
• 负责人: Josh H McDermott
• 金额: $ 37.42万
• 依托单位: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9759900
• 关键词: Acoustics; Address; Age; Algorithms; Area; Attention; Auditory; Auditory system; Behavioral; Binaural; Brain; Characteristics; Cochlear Implants; Communication; Competence; Complex; Cues; Dependence; Development; Devices; Disease; Ear; Engineering; Exhibits; Frequencies; Frustration; Goals; Grouping; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Human; Implant; Knowledge; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Music; Noise; Performance; Process; Property; Prosthesis; Psychoacoustics; Reporting; Research; Restaurants; Role; Signal Transduction; Social isolation; Source; Speech; Speech Intelligibility; Stimulus; Stream; Structure; System; Technology; Testing; Time; Voice; Work; auditory comprehension; automated speech recognition; design; developmental disease; experimental study; hearing impairment; improved; insight; interest; normal hearing; novel; remediation; segregation; sound; speech recognition; speech synthesis; success; vocal cord

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Perhaps the most pervasive problem faced by listeners with hearing impairment or cochlear implants is the difficulty of recognizing speech and other sounds in the presence of competing sound sources, as when conversing at a restaurant. This difficulty in “sound segregation” – hearing a particular sound of interest when it is embedded in a mixture of other sounds – often leads to frustration and social isolation, and is not adequately addressed by current hearing aids and implants. Sound segregation difficulties are also commonly reported in developmental auditory disorders. The long-term goal of the proposed research is to reveal the basis of sound segregation and to provide insights that will facilitate improved prosthetic devices and remediation strategies, as well as more effective machine systems for processing sounds, e.g. for automatic speech recognition. The development of more effective devices, technologies, and therapies is currently limited by an incomplete understanding of the factors that underlie sound segregation by normal-hearing listeners. In particular, little is known about sound segregation with complex naturalistic sounds, in part because much of the research in this area has been conducted using simple signals that are impoverished relative to the sounds listeners normally encounter. We propose to enrich the understanding of sound segregation with three sets of experiments that use novel sound synthesis methods to manipulate properties of natural speech and other sounds and test their role in segregation with behavioral experiments in human listeners. Aim 1 manipulates the classically proposed grouping cue provided by harmonic frequency relations and investigates the mechanisms underlying their effect. Aim 2 investigates the role of prior knowledge of voice and speech structure on segregation, and should help to explain why some voices are easier or harder to segregate than others. Aim 3 investigates the role of attentive tracking in the segregation of sounds from mixtures, and will explore the factors that facilitate tracking or cause it to fail. The results will reveal the mechanisms underlying sound segregation by the healthy auditory system, and will provide insights into the factors that limit auditory comprehension in the presence of multiple sound sources, hopefully suggesting new strategies for signal enhancement, prosthetic devices, and behavioral remediation.

项目摘要 /摘要 听力障碍或人工耳蜗的听众可能面临的最普遍的问题是 在存在竞争性的声音源的情况下，很难识别语音和其他声音，就像 在餐厅交谈。 “声音隔离”的困难 - 听到特定的感兴趣的声音 被嵌入其他声音的混合物中 - 常常导致挫败感和社会隔离，并且不充分 由目前的助听器和即兴解决。声音隔离困难也通常在 发展性听觉障碍。拟议研究的长期目标是揭示声音的基础 种族隔离并提供洞察力，以促进改进的假体设备和修复策略， 以及用于处理声音的更有效的机器系统，例如自动语音识别。这 开发更有效的设备，技术和疗法目前受到不完整的限制 理解正常听众的声音隔离的因素。特别是，几乎没有 关于声音种族隔离的知名度为复杂的自然主义声音，部分原因是其中的许多研究 已经使用相对于声音听众正常听众的简单信号进行了区域 遇到。我们建议通过三组实验来丰富对声音隔离的理解 使用新颖的声音综合方法来操纵自然语音和其他声音的特性并测试他们 在人类听众中通过行为实验进行隔离的作用。目标1操纵经典提议 分组提示由谐波频率关系提供，并研究其基础的机制 影响。 AIM 2调查了语音和语音结构在隔离中的先验知识的作用，应 帮助解释为什么某些声音比其他声音更容易或更难分离。 AIM 3调查了 在混合物中隔离声音时的细心跟踪，并将探索促进跟踪的因素 或导致它失败。结果将揭示健康听觉的声音隔离的机制 系统，并将提供有关在有多个存在下限制听觉理解的因素的见解 声音来源，希望为信号增强，假体设备和 行为修复。