1,720,969 research outputs found
Cognitive Measures Explain Variance in Speech-in-Noise Among Older Adults
No full textBinaural hearing, the ability to hear with two ears, helps individuals localize sound and understand speech in noisy environments. As individuals age, speech-in-noise understanding becomes more difficult, and this decline has been linked to both auditory and cognitive changes. This study investigates how processing speed, the rate at which the brain processes and receives stimuli, affects speech-in-noise understanding. The Coordinate Response Measure (CRM) evaluates how well a person separates speech from background noise. We hypothesized that individuals with higher processing speed would exhibit better speech-in-noise ability, with age acting as a moderator. Processing speed was measured with the NIH Pattern Comparison test, and binaural hearing abilities were assessed with CRM.
Results revealed that higher Pattern Comparison scores significantly predicted better speech-in-noise recognition at 45° (p = 0.00026, R² = 0.478), suggesting that processing speed plays a role in spatial listening ability. However, when age was added to the model, Pattern Comparison was no longer a significant predictor (p = 0.5675), and age itself became the dominant predictor of performance (p = 0.0129). This indicates that age may act as a confounding factor in cognitive influences on speech-in-noise recognition.
These findings highlight the role of cognitive factors in spatial and speech processing, particularly in more complex listening environments. Future research should explore how cognitive training can enhance binaural hearing, particularly in older individuals, and whether targeted interventions can improve spatial listening abilities.National Institute On Deafness And Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R21DC02182
Wait what? The interaction Between Some Cognitive Abilities and Context Benefit
No full textWhen listening to spoken sentences in noisy settings, the brain may rely on surrounding sentence context to aid in understanding the meaning of a sentence. Existing research suggests that variation in the ability to use cognitive processes, specifically inhibition and working memory, may predict a listener's reliance on sentence context. Research also suggests that the position of a missing or unclear word within a sentence may interact with inhibition and working memory ability to predict the listener’s use of sentence context. In this experiment, participants with normal hearing listened to sentences containing a degraded target word. Each sentence context either predicted the target word “deer,” the target word “tear,” or neither target word. The target word was presented at either the beginning or end of the context sentence. Target words were distorted by adding background noise. Participants indicated whether they believed they heard the target word “deer” or “tear.” Participant scores on the NIH Word List Sort Working Memory and Stroop Color-Word Assessments were compared to their reliance on sentence context across both target word position conditions. It was hypothesized that weak inhibition ability and weak working memory will increase reliance on context. The results showed that neither working memory nor inhibition abilities can completely explain listeners’ reliance on sentence context. Future research should explore other cognitive abilities, such as processing speed, that may better predict listeners’ use of sentence context in noisy environments
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Simulating Speech Perception in Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users with Asymmetric Input
Get PDFUnderstanding speech in noise is difficult for cochlear-implant (CI) users. One potential reason for this difficulty is asymmetrical hearing between the two ears; that is, when one ear can process sound more effectively and clearly than the other ear. Such asymmetry may impair some CI users’ ability to fuse speech signals from both ears into a single stream. One way to test this is with an alternating speech paradigm, which is an experimental simplification of speech moving from talker to talker in a rapid conversation between a group of people. Previous studies have shown CI users perform 40% worse on alternating speech listening than normal-hearing individuals. The present study aims to examine if reduced alternating speech perception is the result of asymmetrical hearing, which could cause a listener to only use their better ear when listening to alternating speech, and to miss out on much of the signal that is present in the poorer ear. Six young normal-hearing participants were tested using a CI simulation with varying levels of signal degradation to simulate both asymmetrical and symmetrical hearing. The hypothesis was that participants will show selective attention to the ear with the clearer, less degraded signal in asymmetrical hearing conditions, and will overall perform worse in this condition compared to the symmetrical hearing condition. The results comparing the “better ear” and the asymmetric condition suggest that there is no evidence of selective attention; therefore we can reject the hypothesis. Future directions include increasing asymmetry across ears by simulating more drastic degradation in the “poorer ear”. Speech perception in noise is one of the most common issues CI users face, and quantifying the contributions of asymmetrical hearing to this problem is important for resolving this issue.Maryland Summer Scholars Progra
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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