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Description
The objective of this study was to analyze the auditory feedback system and the pitch-shift reflex in relation to vibrato. 11 subjects (female n = 8, male n = 3) without speech, hearing, or neurological disorders were used. Compensation magnitude, adaptation magnitude, relative response phase, and passive and active perception

The objective of this study was to analyze the auditory feedback system and the pitch-shift reflex in relation to vibrato. 11 subjects (female n = 8, male n = 3) without speech, hearing, or neurological disorders were used. Compensation magnitude, adaptation magnitude, relative response phase, and passive and active perception were recorded when the subjects were subjected to auditory feedback perturbed by phasic amplitude and F0 modulation, or “vibrato”. “Tremolo,” or phasic amplitude modulation, was used as a control. Significant correlation was found between the ability to perceive vibrato and tremolo in active trials and the ability to perceive in passive trials (p=0.01). Passive perceptions were lower (more sensitive) than active perceptions (p< 0.01). Adaptation vibrato trials showed significant modulation magnitude (p=0.031), while tremolo did not. The two conditions were significantly different (p<0.01). There was significant phase change for both tremolo and vibrato, but vibrato phase change was greater, nearly 180° (p<0.01). In the compensation trials, the modulation change from control to vibrato trials was significantly greater than the change from control to tremolo (p=0.01). Vibrato and tremolo also had significantly different average phase change (p<0.01). It can be concluded that the auditory feedback system tries to cancel out dynamic pitch perturbations by cancelling them out out-of-phase. Similar systems must be used to adapt and to compensate to vibrato. Despite the auditory feedback system’s online monitoring, the passive perception was still better than active perception, possibly because it required only one task (perceiving) rather than two (perceiving and producing). The pitch-shift reflex compensates to the sensitivity of the auditory feedback system, as shown by the increased perception of vibrato over tremolo.
ContributorsHiggins, Alexis Brittany (Author) / Daliri, Ayoub (Thesis director) / Liss, Julie (Committee member) / Luo, Xin (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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Description
Stress, depression, and anxiety are prevailing mental health issues that affect individuals worldwide. As the search for effective solutions continues, advancements in technology have led to the development of digital tools for stress identification and management purposes. The Cigna StressWaves Test (CSWT) is a publicly available stress analysis toolkit that

Stress, depression, and anxiety are prevailing mental health issues that affect individuals worldwide. As the search for effective solutions continues, advancements in technology have led to the development of digital tools for stress identification and management purposes. The Cigna StressWaves Test (CSWT) is a publicly available stress analysis toolkit that claims to use “clinical-grade” artificial intelligence (AI) technology to evaluate individual stress levels through speech. To investigate their claim, this research stands as an independent validation study involving 60 participants over the age of 18. The primary objective of the study is to assess the repeatability and efficacy of the CSWT as a stress measurement tool. Key results indicate the CSWT lacks test-retest reliability and convergent validity. This implies that the CWST is not a repeatable tool and does not provide similar stress outcomes relative to an established measure of stress, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). These findings cast doubt on the accuracy and effectiveness of the CWST as a stress assessment tool. The public availability of the CSWT and the claim that it is a “clinical-grade” tool highlights concerns regarding premature deployment of digital health tools for stress management.
ContributorsYawer, Batul (Author) / Berisha, Visar (Thesis advisor) / Liss, Julie (Committee member) / Luo, Xin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Description
Cochlear implant (CI) successfully restores hearing sensation to profoundly deaf patients, but its
performance is limited by poor spectral resolution. Acoustic CI simulation has been widely used
in normal-­hearing (NH) listeners to study the effect of spectral resolution on speech perception,
while avoiding patient-­related confounds. It is unclear how speech production may change

Cochlear implant (CI) successfully restores hearing sensation to profoundly deaf patients, but its
performance is limited by poor spectral resolution. Acoustic CI simulation has been widely used
in normal-­hearing (NH) listeners to study the effect of spectral resolution on speech perception,
while avoiding patient-­related confounds. It is unclear how speech production may change with
the degree of spectral degradation of auditory feedback as experience by CI users. In this study,
a real-­time sinewave CI simulation was developed to provide NH subjects with auditory
feedback of different spectral resolution (1, 2, 4, and 8 channels). NH subjects were asked to
produce and identify vowels, as well as recognize sentences while listening to the real-­time CI
simulation. The results showed that sentence recognition scores with the real-­time CI simulation
improved with more channels, similar to those with the traditional off-­line CI simulation.
Perception of a vowel continuum “HEAD”-­ “HAD” was near chance with 1, 2, and 4 channels,
and greatly improved with 8 channels and full spectrum. The spectral resolution of auditory
feedback did not significantly affect any acoustic feature of vowel production (e.g., vowel space
area, mean amplitude, mean and variability of fundamental and formant frequencies). There
was no correlation between vowel production and perception. The lack of effect of auditory
feedback spectral resolution on vowel production was likely due to the limited exposure of NH
subjects to CI simulation and the limited frequency ranges covered by the sinewave carriers of
CI simulation. Future studies should investigate the effects of various CI processing parameters
on speech production using a noise-­band CI simulation.
ContributorsPerez Lustre, Sarahi (Author) / Luo, Xin (Thesis director) / Daliri, Ayoub (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05