The theoretical considerations of the localization function utilizing time delays have been extended to other areas of acoustics to provide a comprehensive theory useful in explaining speech recognition, attention, and the importance of reverberation on speech intelligibility, acoustic coloration, noise masking, and other phenomena. The knowledge of speech recognition was used in initial work to establish inter-species communication with the porpoise.
Sound source localization is an important research field that has attracted researchers' efforts from many technical and biomedical sciences. Sound source localization (SSL) is defined as the determination of the direction from a receiver, but also includes the distance from it. Because of the wave nature of sound propagation, phenomena such as refraction, diffraction, diffusion, reflection, reverberation and interference occur. The wide spectrum of sound frequencies that range from infrasounds through acoustic sounds to ultrasounds, also introduces difficulties, as different spectrum components have different penetration properties through the medium. Consequently, SSL is a complex computation problem and development of robust sound localization techniques calls for different approaches, including multisensor schemes, null-steering beamforming and time-difference arrival techniques. The book offers a rich source of valuable material on advances on SSL techniques and their applications that should appeal to researches representing diverse engineering and scientific disciplines.
The field of spatial hearing has exploded in the decade or so since Jens Blauert's classic work on acoustics was first published in English. This revised edition adds a new chapter that describes developments in such areas as auditory virtual reality (an important field of application that is based mainly on the physics of spatial hearing), binaural technology (modeling speech enhancement by binaural hearing), and spatial sound-field mapping. The chapter also includes recent research on the precedence effect that provides clear experimental evidence that cognition plays a significant role in spatial hearing.The remaining four chapters in this comprehensive reference cover auditory research procedures and psychometric methods, spatial hearing with one sound source, spatial hearing with multiple sound sources and in enclosed spaces, and progress and trends from 1972 (the first German edition) to 1983 (the first English edition) -- work that includes research on the physics of the external ear, and the application of signal processing theory to modeling the spatial hearing process. There is an extensive bibliography of more than 900 items.
The Springer Handbook of Auditory Research presents a series of compreh- sive and synthetic reviews of the fundamental topics in modern auditory - search. The volumes are aimed at all individuals with interests in hearing research including advanced graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and clinical investigators. The volumes are intended to introduce new investigators to important aspects of hearing science and to help established investigators to better understand the fundamental theories and data in ?elds of hearing that they may not normally follow closely. Each volume presents a particular topic comprehensively, and each serves as a synthetic overview and guide to the literature. As such, the chapters present neither exhaustive data reviews nor original research that has not yet appeared in peer-reviewed journals. The volumes focus on topics that have developed a solid data and conceptual foundation rather than on those for which a literature is only beginning to develop. New research areas will be covered on a timely basis in the series as they begin to mature.
This book provides the latest information about the development of intersensory perception -- a topic which has recently begun to receive a great deal of attention from researchers studying the general problem of perceptual development. This interest was inspired after the realization that unimodal perception of sensory information is only the first stage of perceptual processing. Under normal conditions, an organism is faced with multiple, multisensory sources of information and its task is to either select a single relevant source of information or select several sources of information and integrate them. In general, perception and action on the basis of multiple sources of information is more efficient and effective. Before greater efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved, however, the organism must be able to integrate the multiple sources of information. By doing so, the organism can then achieve a coherent and unified percept of the world. The various chapters in this book examine the developmental origins of intersensory perceptual capacities by presenting the latest research on the development of intersensory perceptual skills in a variety of different species. By adopting a comparative approach to this problem, this volume as a whole helps uncover similarities as well as differences in the mechanisms underlying the development of intersensory integration. In addition, it shows that there is no longer any doubt that intersensory interactions occur right from the beginning of the developmental process, that the nature of these intersensory interactions changes as development progresses, and that early experience contributes in important ways to these changes.
Being both broad - perception and motor organization - and narrow - just onegroup of animals - at the same time, this book presents a new unified framework for understanding perceptuomotor organization, stressing the importance of an ecological perspective. Section I reviews recent research on a variety of sensory and perceptual processes in birds, which all involve subtle analyses of the relationships between species' perceptual mechanisms and their ecology and behaviour. Section II describes the variousresearch approaches - behavioural, neurophysiological, anatomical and comparative - all dealing with the common problem of understanding how the activities of large numbers of muscles are coordinated to generate adaptive behaviour. Section III is concerned with a range of approaches to analyzing the links between perceptual and motor processes, through cybernetic modelling, neurophysiological analysis, and behavioural methods.
