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- Creators: College of Integrative Sciences and Arts
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
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.
The goal of the research is to assist Barrett Honors students at Arizona State University by generating a mindset that embraces feelings of stress rather than avoiding it. After data collection was complete, the researchers created a valuable and necessary field guide for ASU Barrett Faculty to provide for incoming students. The present study has been compiled to prove the importance of reframing one's perception of stress as an aid, reducing one's “symptomatic” perception of stress and experiencing life's stresses as challenges, and to cease living in a constant unhealthy state of fight or flight. The main research questions are: What is the average perceived stress level of Barrett Honors students and what information can ASU further provide incoming Barrett students that will alleviate overall perceived stress levels based on the data collection and field guide generated from the present study? The basis of the present study began with a survey compiled of demographic questions, questions relating to the Human Event (HE - a required honors course), and lastly the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) developed by Sheldon Cohen, Tom Kamarck, and Robin Mermelstein, with slight modification for students relating to their perception of stress over the last semester. After survey responses were concluded, it was determined that the average perceived stress score among honors students was 18.57, shockingly lower than what was previously thought. The overall results of the PSS survey indicate that Barrett students are moderately stressed, disproving the researchers initial hypothesis that honors students perceived stress scores would be considered high on the PSS. The results did provide researchers with enough data to compile an incoming Barrett student field guide based on desired information reported in the survey. A discussion of the results explores the purpose of how the present study can be used in helping students with perceived stress, interpretations and significance of the data, correlation between academic success and perceived stress, major contributions to the study, and limitations and recommendations for future research.