Portable psychoacoustics with passive and active noise-attenuating headphones

This presentation will describe data collected using a freely available procedure for psychoacoustical testing that harnesses commercially available tablet computer technology to address the current gap between (1) modern auditory neuroscience and psychophysics and (2) current clinically available tests of hearing. Portable Automated Rapid Testing (PART) measures running on an iPad were used to evaluate the detection of (a) tones in noise; (b) spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal modulation; (c) monaural and binaural frequency modulation; and (d) brief temporal gaps inserted between brief tone pulses. Listeners also performed a spatial release from speech-on-speech masking task. Data from 151 UCR undergraduates were collected using both passive and active noise-attenuating headphones in a quiet environment and in the presence of recorded cafeteria noise. Across these and several other manipulations of equipment and threshold-estimation techniques, performance approximated that reported in the literature. These data provide a distribution of thresholds that can now be used as a normative baseline against which auditory dysfunction can be identified in future work.This presentation will describe data collected using a freely available procedure for psychoacoustical testing that harnesses commercially available tablet computer technology to address the current gap between (1) modern auditory neuroscience and psychophysics and (2) current clinically available tests of hearing. Portable Automated Rapid Testing (PART) measures running on an iPad were used to evaluate the detection of (a) tones in noise; (b) spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal modulation; (c) monaural and binaural frequency modulation; and (d) brief temporal gaps inserted between brief tone pulses. Listeners also performed a spatial release from speech-on-speech masking task. Data from 151 UCR undergraduates were collected using both passive and active noise-attenuating headphones in a quiet environment and in the presence of recorded cafeteria noise. Across these and several other manipulations of equipment and threshold-estimation techniques, performance approximated that reported in the literatu...