An Intensity Discrimination Study Search

“involves a subject conducting a certain task, in this case recalling a series of numbers, while listening to different kinds of background music. If sound exhibits acoustical variations, or what Perham calls an "acute changing-state," performance is impaired. Steady-state sounds with little acoustical variation don't impair performance nearly as much.”(Cutler).

In the paper, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, George A. Miller points out the correlations between neural processing to recognize previously shown information and the amount of information that can actually be remembered. He presents several experiments done with unidimensional stimuli, where there is only one stimuli, and multidimensional stimuli, where there are more than one. In the first experiments talked about, only one sensory process was tested. For example, Pollack’s experiment tested the auditory sense and the ability to differentiate between pitches. Other experiments were recognized that included the other senses, taste and sight, and all the responses varied around the number six. After around six correct responses,

The aim of this study was to further investigate whether the interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus is influenced by immediate past experience, and, therefore, by the establishment of a perceptual set. It is based on an experiment conducted by Bugelski and Alampay (1961).

We use our ears to pick up different tones and sounds in our environments. One question in the challenge involved a set of piano keys and each one varied in sound. The first and the last key actually made the same sound but most people brains do not pick up on it because the brain assumes that the tone is slowly getting higher. Another asked you to put a list of sounds in order from loudest to quietest sounds by decibels. The senses challenge also taught me that decibels are the measure of the intensity of a sound. I also learned that any amount of noise over ninety decibels can damage your ears if you are exposed to it long

1 The graph shows A). Subjects were asked to report on acoustic stimuli in the form of sound bursts and visual streams from either the right or left hemifield. While maintaining central fixation, they were required to report on the number of beeps and flashes and the direction of the stimuli. The testers varied the number of events from auditory, visual, or auditory and visual streams. B). Illustrates trial types and the attended direction and the number of stimulus C). Stimulus

[25, 26]). In contrast, although premotor RTs in response to loud acoustic stimuli (>114 dBa) are somewhat heterogeneous, differences in premotor RT as a function of foreperiod variability are clearly mitigated, showing similar average estimates and overlapping confidence intervals for the subgroups (see Figure 4).

Race and ethnic background also is not important to results; however, English speaking is preferred, as instructions will be given in English. Sample size will be 100 participants made of up 50 female and 50 male subjects. Recruitment will occur via email messages sent to college campuses with graduate programs throughout the United States. As there is an age cut-off, the invitation to participate in the study will be sent only to junior year students and beyond to ensure the age requirement is met. Graduate programs are a must to guarantee enough students at the schools are old enough to participate. Lastly, additional criteria will be required of the participants. Normal, non-corrected 20/20 vision is required. Also, participants cannot possess any other type of sensational deficit (e.g. no hearing, taste, touch, or smell impairments). As important as the participants are, I cannot carry out the experiment without the necessary materials.

First, Gianna engaged in three subtasks designed to measure her auditory memory. She was required to listen to a sequence of numbers and then asked to recall the numbers in the same order (forward

7). The Sensory memory could be compared to a sorting table of information. Everything collected by our senses from the environment around us is dumped onto a sorting table known as Sensory Memory. This information does not stay there long, only a few seconds before it is saved into our short-term memory if it is valuable or discarded if it is not. Once in the short-term memory the information needs to be repeated to be remembered and moved into the long-term memory. This process is known as memory consolidation, rehearsal or consciously repeating information is a requirement for long-term memory retention. Otherwise, the information is lost after twenty seconds in the short-term memory. The long-term memory is limitless in its capacity to store information, it holds memories from just a few minutes ago, to years and years ago. As an example, if I were studying for a mid-term exam, I would use a three-step process to retain the information. First, I would read the information start to finish, highlighting information I found interesting or pertinent to lessons objectives. Thus, I am taking the information in though my sensory memory and recognizing that I want to retain it. Second within the twenty seconds the information is in my short-term memory I repeat the information by highlighting it. Thus, through rehearsal the information is consolidated and moved into long term memory. Lastly, I would put the information on flash cards using my own words, for more repetition, to assist me in the recognition and recall of the information during the

In 1953, Cherry published several experiments on recognition of speech. This was the first work to address the “cocktail party problem,” how humans are able to recognize what one person is saying while others are talking simultaneously (Cherry, 1953, p. 976). Cherry’s research introduced a problem of recognition: how humans separate speech. This research played a role in Broadbent’s early theory for a mechanical model for attention and immediate attention. Broadbent designed a mechanical model to express the verbal theories of attention and immediate memory. Cherry’s findings are reflected in the immediate memory model. An experiment conducted by Treisman and Riley sought to test effects of attention in competing verbal sensory tasks.

The article labels how sounds influence peoples’ emotions in categorization of environmental sounds. The first experiment focuses on dissimilarly ratings that “obtain a multi-dimensional scaling of the stimuli” (3156). The individual difference-scaling (INDSCAL) model is an instrument that was used in to read dissimilarity ratings. The second experiment concentrates on auditory alerts with “perceptual ratings of various semantic attributes” (3156).

The ability of an individual to carry out auditory tasks in the real world is influenced not only by his or her hearing abilities, but also by a multitude of situational factors, such as background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and familiarity with the situation. Such factors are important regardless of whether one has a hearing loss, but the effects are magnified when hearing is impaired. For example, when an individual with normal hearing engages in conversation in a quiet, well-lit setting, visual information from the speaker’s face, along with situational cues and linguistic context, can make communication quite effortless. In contrast, in a noisy environment, with poor lighting and limited visual cues, it may be much more difficult

The limits of strength of short-term memory in the terms of phonology and pitch processing in seven and eight-year old’s. The children were giving non-familiar sounds at different speeds of repetitions and tones of voice. The repetitions speed where to see to figure out how long their short-term memory is. The repetitions are part of the process in our short-term memory known as maintenance rehearsal, which we learn about in chapter six on page 231 in our textbooks. The speed of the repetitions were around 0 to 8 seconds. They were given each one at different tone and ask to distinguish the difference by vocally reproducing the sound. This study may have produce better results if the two different tones were as high as the kid could go and

The regression analyses enabled the investigation of the relationship between hearing loss and performance on the CANTAB subtests while controlling for the effects of age and IQ. The performance on the subtests did show a decline with increasing age. It was decided to control the effects of age and IQ before calculating the additive predictive value of hearing loss on the subtests. Five regression analyses were preformed. The mean percentage-correct answers in the PRM subtest were 83.3% (range 58%-100%). The mean RVP-d was 2.45 (range 0.17-3.36) and the mean of RVP-b was 11.0 (range 1.3-14.9). Both were relatively high, indicating the participants made few misses and few false alarms. The present data indicates that increased hearing loss is not associated with lower pattern recognition memory; inferior sustained visual attention, or more faults made during a spatial working memory test when individuals with vary degrees of hearing loss are