Responses To Songs With Altered Tonal Quality By Adult Song Sparrows (Melospiza Melodia)

Behaviour ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 133 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 161-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Nowicki ◽  
Jared Strote

AbstractPure-tone sounds are a common and distinctive feature of many birdsongs. We used field playback experiments to test whether this tonal quality is perceptually salient to adult male song sparrows in the context of song recognition, by comparing responses to playback of normal songs with responses elicited by songs that had harmonics added. This species was chosen for study based on the recent finding that young song sparrows do not show a preference for songs with pure tones over songs with harmonics when choosing model songs to copy during their sensitive phase for learning. We found adult song sparrows to be significantly more responsive to normal song than to harmonic song, consistent with results from adult birds of other species. We conclude that the perceptual salience of the tonal quality of song changes during ontogeny or is context-dependent.

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-690
Author(s):  
C. S. Vanaja ◽  
Miriam Soni Abigail

Purpose Misophonia is a sound tolerance disorder condition in certain sounds that trigger intense emotional or physiological responses. While some persons may experience misophonia, a few patients suffer from misophonia. However, there is a dearth of literature on audiological assessment and management of persons with misophonia. The purpose of this report is to discuss the assessment of misophonia and highlight the management option that helped a patient with misophonia. Method A case study of a 26-year-old woman with the complaint of decreased tolerance to specific sounds affecting quality of life is reported. Audiological assessment differentiated misophonia from hyperacusis. Management included retraining counseling as well as desensitization and habituation therapy based on the principles described by P. J. Jastreboff and Jastreboff (2014). A misophonia questionnaire was administered at regular intervals to monitor the effectiveness of therapy. Results A detailed case history and audiological evaluations including pure-tone audiogram and Johnson Hyperacusis Index revealed the presence of misophonia. The patient benefitted from intervention, and the scores of the misophonia questionnaire indicated a decrease in the severity of the problem. Conclusions It is important to differentially diagnose misophonia and hyperacusis in persons with sound tolerance disorders. Retraining counseling as well as desensitization and habituation therapy can help patients who suffer from misophonia.


Traditio ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott DeGregorio

As a monk at the famous Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede (673–735) produced a body of exegetical work that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Something of that spirit seems to have reawakened in recent years, as Bede's commentaries are increasingly being studied and made available to wider audiences in English translation. One distinctive feature of this development is a growing awareness that Bede's reputation as an exegete is more multifaceted than has been previously realized, that it goes beyond what Beryl Smalley called “his faithful presentation of the tradition in its many aspects. Whereas earlier interpreters were content to regard Bede as a mere compiler reputed for his good sense and able Latinity, scholars are now paying homage to him as a penetrating and perceptive biblical commentator who did more than reproduce the thought of the fathers who preceded him. As I intend to show in what follows, Bede's treatment of prayer and contemplation in his exegesis attests well to this quality of his thought. The topic to date has received only minimal commentary, mainly on what Bede actually taught about prayer. My approach will be different. I begin with a discussion not of Bede's exegetical method but of his occupations and aims as a spiritual writer. Neither Bede's spirituality nor his role as spiritual writer have received the attention they deserve, and it is hoped that the reflections offered here will help rekindle interest in these neglected subjects. I then consider four prayer-related themes in his exegesis that bring his aims as a spiritual writer into view. Patristic tradition had commented widely on prayer, and Bede, we will see, did not set out to summarize this tradition in its entirety but rather to highlight and distill certain themes within it, those that best suited the needs of his Anglo-Saxon audience.


1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-396
Author(s):  
Richard H. Wilson ◽  
Richard W. Stream ◽  
Donald D. Dirks

A series of experiments was performed to study the upward-spread-of-masking phenomena as it pertains to pure-tone and speech stimuli. In the initial two experiments, three maskers were employed over a 40–60-dB intensity range. They included a wide band (50–5500 Hz), a speech spectrum (50–1000 Hz), and a narrow-band (50–950 Hz) noise. All filter slopes were 48 dB/octave, except for the upper slope of the speech-spectrum noise that was 6 dB/octave. In the first experiment, pure-tone thresholds obtained by a tracking procedure revealed no spread of masking when the wide-band and speech-spectrum maskers were used. Substantial spread-of-masking effects, characterized by nonlinear threshold increments outside the spectrum of the masker, were observed with the narrow-band masker. The second experiment included three types of speech stimuli (PBs, spondees, and synthetic sentences) under the same mask conditions used with the pure tones. Threshold shifts observed for the wide- and speech-spectrum maskers were linear with the masking intensity level. However, increased shifts, attributable to spread of masking, were observed with the narrow band and progressed nonlinearly as a function of the masking level. Finally, two additional experiments, performed with two different narrow-band maskers and spondee words, provided insightful information regarding the effects of the spread of masking on speech stimuli.


Author(s):  
Richard F. Bozak

Abstract An important noise source in modern high bypass ratio turbofans is from multiple pure tones produced by the fan during takeoff. An experiment conducted on a 1.5 pressure ratio fan in an internal flow facility provided dynamic pressure measurements to investigate multiple pure tone generation and propagation. Since multiple pure tones are generated by blade shock variation primarily due to the fan’s blade stagger angle differences, the blade stagger angles were measured with an array of over-the-rotor dynamic pressure transducers. Multiple pure tone measurements were made with 30 wall-mounted dynamic pressure transducers from 0.4 to 1.1 diameters upstream of the rotor. Measured blade stagger angle differences correspond to the the shock amplitude variation measured upstream. The acoustic field was extracted from the dynamic pressure signals using principal component analysis as well as duct mode beamforming. Shocks traveling out the inlet were found to couple to duct modes propagating at similar angles. Over-the-rotor acoustic liners appear to reduce rotor shock variation resulting in a reduction of sub-harmonic multiple pure tone sound pressure levels by 3–4 dB.


1989 ◽  
Vol 86 (S1) ◽  
pp. S121-S121
Author(s):  
I. M. Young ◽  
L. D. Lowry
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
Vol 133 (09) ◽  
pp. 796-804
Author(s):  
R Larsen-Reindorf ◽  
E Otupiri ◽  
J E Anomah ◽  
B M Edwards ◽  
B Frimpong ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundPaediatric hearing loss rates in Ghana are currently unknown.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana; children (aged 3–15 years) were recruited from randomly selected households. Selected children underwent otoscopic examination prior to in-community pure tone screening using the portable ShoeBox audiometer. The LittlEars auditory questionnaire was also administered to caregivers and parents.ResultsData were collected from 387 children. After conditioning, 362 children were screened using monaural pure tones presented at 25 dB. Twenty-five children could not be conditioned to behavioural audiometric screening. Eight children were referred based on audiometric screening results. Of those, four were identified as having hearing loss. Four children scored less than the maximum mark of 35 on the LittleEars questionnaire. Of those, three had hearing loss as identified through pure tone screening. The predominant physical finding on otoscopy was ear canal cerumen impaction.ConclusionPaediatric hearing loss is prevalent in Ghana, and should be treated as a public health problem warranting further evaluation and epidemiology characterisation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1846) ◽  
pp. 20162429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobey Ben-Aderet ◽  
Mario Gallego-Abenza ◽  
David Reby ◽  
Nicolas Mathevon

Pet-directed speech is strikingly similar to infant-directed speech, a peculiar speaking pattern with higher pitch and slower tempo known to engage infants' attention and promote language learning. Here, we report the first investigation of potential factors modulating the use of dog-directed speech, as well as its immediate impact on dogs' behaviour. We recorded adult participants speaking in front of pictures of puppies, adult and old dogs, and analysed the quality of their speech. We then performed playback experiments to assess dogs' reaction to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. We found that human speakers used dog-directed speech with dogs of all ages and that the acoustic structure of dog-directed speech was mostly independent of dog age, except for sound pitch which was relatively higher when communicating with puppies. Playback demonstrated that, in the absence of other non-auditory cues, puppies were highly reactive to dog-directed speech, and that the pitch was a key factor modulating their behaviour, suggesting that this specific speech register has a functional value in young dogs. Conversely, older dogs did not react differentially to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. The fact that speakers continue to use dog-directed with older dogs therefore suggests that this speech pattern may mainly be a spontaneous attempt to facilitate interactions with non-verbal listeners.


2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1850) ◽  
pp. 20162763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirmin Nietlisbach ◽  
Lukas F. Keller ◽  
Glauco Camenisch ◽  
Frédéric Guillaume ◽  
Peter Arcese ◽  
...  

Although the pedigree-based inbreeding coefficient F predicts the expected proportion of an individual's genome that is identical-by-descent (IBD), heterozygosity at genetic markers captures Mendelian sampling variation and thereby provides an estimate of realized IBD. Realized IBD should hence explain more variation in fitness than their pedigree-based expectations, but how many markers are required to achieve this in practice remains poorly understood. We use extensive pedigree and life-history data from an island population of song sparrows ( Melospiza melodia ) to show that the number of genetic markers and pedigree depth affected the explanatory power of heterozygosity and F , respectively, but that heterozygosity measured at 160 microsatellites did not explain more variation in fitness than F . This is in contrast with other studies that found heterozygosity based on far fewer markers to explain more variation in fitness than F . Thus, the relative performance of marker- and pedigree-based estimates of IBD depends on the quality of the pedigree, the number, variability and location of the markers employed, and the species-specific recombination landscape, and expectations based on detailed and deep pedigrees remain valuable until we can routinely afford genotyping hundreds of phenotyped wild individuals of genetic non-model species for thousands of genetic markers.


2012 ◽  
Vol 107 (7) ◽  
pp. 1962-1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Althen ◽  
A. Wittekindt ◽  
B. Gaese ◽  
M. Kössl ◽  
C. Abel

Contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS) with white noise and pure tone stimuli was used to assess frequency specificity of efferent olivocochlear control of cochlear mechanics in the gerbil. Changes of the cochlear amplifier can be monitored by distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), which are a byproduct of the nonlinear amplification by the outer hair cells. We used the quadratic DPOAE f2-f1 as ipsilateral probe, as it is known to be sensitive to efferent olivocochlear activity. White noise CAS, used to evoke efferent activity, had maximal effects on the DPOAE level for f2-stimulus frequencies of 5–7 kHz. The dominant effect during CAS was a DPOAE level increase of up to 13.5 dB. The frequency specificity of the olivocochlear system was evaluated by presenting pure tones (0.5–38 kHz) as contralateral stimuli to evoke efferent activity. Maximal DPOAE level changes were triggered by CAS frequencies close to the frequency of the DPOAE elicitor tones (tested f2 range: 2.5–15 kHz). The effective CAS frequency range covered 1.4–2.4 octaves and was centered 0.42 octaves below the DPOAE elicitor tone f2. The frequency-specific effect of CAS with pure tones suggests a dedicated central control of mechanical adjustments for peripheral frequency processing.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atencio Vizcaíno Hebert Leonidas ◽  
Tintín Perdomo Verónica Paulina ◽  
Caiza Caizabuano José Rubén ◽  
Caicedo Altamirano Fernando Sebastián

Hearing loss is one of the most common health problems today, it can appear at any age and the causes are varied, in order to prevent it or adapt to the changes brought about by the hearing impairment, it is necessary to diagnose it in time. The technology in terms of applications for health care smartphones has constantly evolved, so that today play an important role and are among the most downloaded from application stores, several of these applications are the diagnosis of hearing loss and use the method of pure tones. In this study a Systematic Mapping of Literature SMS (Systematic Mapping Study) is made to look for mobile applications that use other diagnostic methods that offer similar or better results, of the 13 applications found, 11 used the method of pure tones and in only 2 of them was implemented the speech audiometry (word recognition), concludes that diagnostic hearing loss tests based on mobile applications are reliable alternatives to conventional audiometric systems, and that pure tone thresholds alone are an incomplete assessment of hearing, and there is a need to develop new hearing measurement methods and combine them with other methods to complement the diagnosis. Resumen: La pérdida de la audición es uno de los problemas de salud más comunes en la actualidad, puede aparecer a cualquier edad y las causas son variadas, para poder prevenirla o adaptarse a los cambios que conlleva la deficiencia auditiva, es necesario diagnosticarla a tiempo. La tecnología en cuanto a aplicaciones para smartphones de asistencia de salud ha evolucionado constantemente, tal es así que hoy en día juegan un papel importante y son de las más descargadas de las tiendas de aplicaciones, varias de esas aplicaciones son las de diagnóstico de pérdida auditiva y utilizan el método de los tonos puros. En este estudio se hace un Mapeo Sistemático de Literatura SMS (Systematic Mapping Study) para buscar aplicaciones móviles que utilicen otros métodos de diagnóstico que ofrezcan similares o mejores resultados, de las 13 aplicaciones encontradas, 11 utilizaron el método de los tonos puros y en solo 2 de ellas se implementó la logoaudiometria (reconocimiento de palabras), por lo que se concluye que las pruebas de diagnóstico de pérdida auditiva basadas en aplicaciones móviles, son alternativas confiables a los sistemas de audiometría convencionales,  y que los umbrales de tonos puros por sí solos son una evaluación incompleta de la audición, y existe la necesidad de desarrollar nuevos métodos de medición de audición y combinarlos con otros métodos para complementar el diagnóstico.


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