Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, 06800, Turkey
Ela Fasllija, Enkela Alimadhi, Zekiye Şahin, Elif Mercan, Donya Dalirnaghadeh
Popular version of 5aPP9 – A Corpus-based Approach to Define Turkish Soundscape Attributes
Presented at the 184 ASA Meeting
Read the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0019179
We hear sound wherever we are, on buses, in streets, in cafeterias, museums, universities, halls, churches, mosques, and so forth. How we describe sound environments (soundscapes) changes according to the different experiences we have throughout our lives. Based on this, we wonder how people delineate sound environments and, thus how they perceive them.
There are reasons to believe there may be variances in how soundscape affective attributes are called in a Turkish context. Considering the historical and cultural differences countries have, we thought that it would be important to assess the sound environment by asking individuals of different ages all over Turkey. For our aim, we used the Corpus-driven approach (CDA), an approach found in Cognitive Linguistics. This allowed us to collect data from laypersons to effectively identify soundscapes based on adjective usage.
In this study, the aim is to discover linguistically and culturally appropriate equivalents of Turkish soundscape attributes. The study involved two phases. In the first phase, an online questionnaire was distributed to native Turkish speakers proficient in English, seeking adjective descriptions of their auditory environment and English-to-Turkish translations. This CDA phase yielded 79 adjectives.
Figure 1 Example public spaces; a library and a restaurant
In the second phase, a semantic-scale questionnaire was used to evaluate recordings of different acoustic environments in public spaces. The set of environments comprised seven distinct types of public spaces, including cafes, restaurants, concert halls, masjids, libraries, study areas, and design studios. These recordings were collected at various times of the day to ensure they also contained different crowdedness and specific features. A total of 24 audio recordings were evaluated for validity; each listened to 10 times by different participants. In total, 240 audio clips were randomly assessed, with participants rating 79 adjectives per recording on a five-point Likert scale.
Figure 2 The research process and results
The results of the study were analyzed using a principal component analysis (PCA), which showed that there are two main components of soundscape attributes: Pleasantness and Eventfulness. The components were organized in a two-dimensional model, where each is associated with a main orthogonal axis such as annoying-comfortable and dynamic-uneventful. This circular organization of soundscape attributes is supported by two additional axes, namely chaotic-calm and monotonous-enjoyable. It was also observed that in the Turkish circumplex, the Pleasantness axis was formed by adjectives derived from verbs in a causative form, explaining the emotion the space causes the user to feel. It was discovered that Turkish has a different lexical composition of words compared to many other languages, where several suffixes are added to the root term to impose different meanings. For instance, the translation of tranquilizer in Turkish is sakin-leş (reciprocal suffix) -tir (causative suffix)- ici (adjective suffix).
The study demonstrates how cultural differences impact sound perception and language’s role in expression. Its method extends beyond soundscape research and may benefit other translation projects. Further investigations could probe parallel cultures and undertake cross-cultural analyses.
Archie’s Cochlear Implant Laboratory, The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children, TORONTO, ON, M5G1X8, Canada
Popular version of 3aPP5 – Non-auditory processing of cochlear implant stimulation after unilateral auditory deprivation in children
Presented at the 184 ASA Meeting
Read the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0018669/
Decades of research have shown that hearing from only one ear in childhood should not be dismissed as a “minimal” hearing problem as it can impair language, cognitive, and academic development. We have been exploring whether there are effects of unilateral hearing on the developing brain. A series of studies has been done in children who have one deaf ear and who hear from the other side through a normal or typically hearing ear, a hearing aid, or a cochlear implant. We record electrical fields of brain activity from electrodes placed on the surface of the head (encephalography); we then calculate what parts of the brain are responding.
The findings show that auditory pathways from the hearing ear to the auditory cortices are strengthened in children with long term unilateral hearing. In other words, the hearing brain has developed a preference for the hearing ear. As shown in Figure 1, responses from the better hearing ear were also from areas of the brain involving attention and other sensory processing. This means that areas beyond the auditory parts of the brain are involved in hearing from the better ear.
Figure 1 legend: Cortical areas abnormally active from the experienced ear in children with long periods of unilateral cochlear implant use include left frontal cortex and precuneus.Adapted from Jiwani S, Papsin BC, Gordon KA. Early unilateral cochlear implantation promotes mature cortical asymmetries in adolescents who are deaf. Hum Brain Mapp. 2016 Jan;37(1):135-52. doi: 10.1002/hbm.23019. Epub 2015 Oct 12. PMID: 26456629; PMCID: PMC6867517.
We also asked whether there were brain changes from the ear deprived of sound in children. This question was addressed by measuring cortical responses in three cohorts of children with unilateral hearing who received a cochlear implant in their deaf ear (single sided deafness, bilateral hearing aid users with asymmetric hearing loss, and unilateral cochlear implant users). Many of these children showed atypical responses from the cochlear implant with unusually strong responses from the brain on the same side of the deaf implanted ear. As shown in Figure 2, this unusual response was most clear in children who had not heard from that ear for several years (Figure 2A) and was already present during the first year of bilateral implant use (Figure 2B).
Figure 2 legend: Cortical responses evoked by the second cochlear implant (CI-2) in children receiving bilateral devices. A) Whereas expected contralateral lateralization of activity is evoked in children with short periods of unilateral deprivation/short delays to bilateral implantation, abnormal ipsilateral responses are found in children with long periods of unilateral deprivation despite several years of bilateral CI use. Adapted from: Gordon KA, Wong DD, Papsin BC. Bilateral input protects the cortex from unilaterally-driven reorganization in children who are deaf. Brain. 2013 May;136(Pt 5):1609-25. doi: 10.1093/brain/awt052. Epub 2013 Apr 9. PMID: 23576127. B) Abnormal ipsilateral responses are also found throughout the first year of bilateral CI use in children with long periods of unilateral deprivation/long delays to bilateral CI. Adapted from Anderson CA, Cushing SL, Papsin BC, Gordon KA. Cortical imbalance following delayed restoration of bilateral hearing in deaf adolescents. Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Aug 15;43(12):3662-3679. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25875. Epub 2022 Apr 15. PMID: 35429083; PMCID: PMC9294307
New analyses have shown that this this response from the CI in the longer deaf ear includes areas of the brain involved in attention, language, and vision.
Results across these studies demonstrate brain changes that occur in children with unilateral hearing/deprivation. Some of these changes happen in the auditory system but others involve other brain areas and suggest that multiple parts of the brain are working when children listen with their cochlear implants.
Main anatomical shape factors of the vocal tract. Credit: Antoine Serrurier
WASHINGTON, March 21, 2023 – Only humans have the ability to use speech. Remarkably, this communication is understandable across accent, social background, and anatomy despite a wide variety of ways to produce the necessary sounds. In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers from…click to read more
The American Public Health Association states, “Noise is unwanted and/or harmful sound.” Noise not loud enough to damage hearing causes high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) considers noise an annoyance but does not acknowledge the adverse health effects of aircraft noise. Based on the Schultz curve, the FAA adopted 65 dBA Day-Night Level (DNL) as “the threshold for significant aviation noise, below which residential land use is compatible.” The FAA’s recent Neighborhood Environmental Survey found that many more Americans are annoyed by noise than previously known.
Schultz Curve and Neighborhood Environmental Survey results, showing that many more Americans are annoyed by noise than the Schultz Curve showed. Source: FAA
[I have to tell you a little about the science of sound or noise measurement. The words sound and noise are used interchangeably. Sound is measured in decibels (dB). The decibel scale is logarithmic. This means that a 10 dB increase from 50 to 60 dB indicates 10 times more sound energy, not merely 20% more. Because noise disrupts sleep, DNL measures noise for 24 hours but adds a 10 dB penalty for noise between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. A-weighting (dBA) adjusts sound measurements for the frequencies heard in human speech. A-weighting is not the right measure for aircraft noise because aircraft noise has lower frequencies than speech. A-weighting also reduces unweighted sound measurements by about 20-30 dB.]
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), though, safe noise levels are only 45 dB DNL for indoor noise and 55 dB DNL for outdoor noise. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends lower aircraft noise levels: 45 dB Day-Evening-Night Level (adding a 5 dB penalty for noise between 7-10 p.m.) and 40 dB at night. Both EPA safe noise levels and WHO recommended aircraft noise levels are obviously much lower than the FAA’s 65 dBA DNL, especially because they use unweighted dB.
Being annoyed or disturbed by aircraft noise is stressful. Stress increases heart rate and blood pressure. Stress increases blood levels of stress hormones. Stress causes inflammation of the blood vessel lining. in turn causing cardiovascular disease, including hypertension and heart attacks, and other adverse health effects. Scientific experts think that the evidence is strong enough to establish causality, not merely a statistical association. Epidemiological studies demonstrating these effects have been confirmed by human and animal research. The biological mechanisms are now understood at the cellular, subcellular, molecular, and genetic levels. Aircraft noise also affects poor and minority communities more than others. Children are also more sensitive to damage from noise, which also interferes with learning.
The FAA insists that more research is needed, but no more research is needed to know that aviation noise is hazardous to health. The FAA must establish lower noise standards to protect Americans exposed to aircraft noise.
Assistive listening devices can filter out noise from loudspeakers, improving clarity
Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090 media@aip.org
DENVER, May 25, 2022 – People with hearing aids and other assistive listening devices often struggle at crowded events, because the various sources of sound make it difficult to make out any one of them clearly.
During the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Ryan M. Corey, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will discuss his technique to improve hearing aid performance by actively canceling out unwanted sounds from speaker systems. His presentation, “Turn the music down! Repurposing assistive listening broadcast systems to remove nuisance sounds,” will take place May 25 at 1:45 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.
For someone using an assistive listening device in a crowded place, it might make little difference whether the device is on or off. Nearby conversation directed at the user might be drowned out by distant conversation between other people, ambient noise from the environment, or music or speech piped through a loudspeaker system.
Corey and his colleagues worked to eliminate at least one source of noise, the one emanating from loudspeakers or other broadcast systems. By pairing the hearing aid with the broadcast system, the researchers can cancel out whatever is being broadcast and leaving the user free to enjoy nearby conversation.
“This project is a form of selective noise cancellation,” said Corey. “Noise-canceling headphones, like the kind that are popular for airplanes, are designed to cancel out everything. In this system, we only want to cancel a specific sound, like the music playing over the speakers, but let other sounds through.”
This approach is designed to be versatile and seamless. It should work for any venue, indoor or outdoor, where a loudspeaker or broadcast system is present. and should remove only the broadcast noise while preserving other nearby sounds just as the listener would normally hear them.
In the future, Corey hopes to combine this technology with arrays of microphones to give wearers of assistive listening devices even more control over which sounds they can listen to.
“My research is devoted to making hearing technology work better in noisy environments, usually by adding more microphones that can pick up sound from far away,” said Corey. “Most of my research focuses on those technologies, and they could be combined with this system to both remove noise and enhance specific talkers.”
WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.
PRESS REGISTRATION We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.
Listening Can Be Exhausting for Older Cochlear Implant Users
Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users
Media Contact: Larry Frum AIP Media 301-209-3090 media@aip.org
DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Degraded acoustic signals can make hearing difficult for anyone, but differences in cognitive abilities, age-related changes, and the use of cochlear implants may exacerbate the problem. If it is more challenging to hear, it is also exhausting to communicate.
In her presentation, “Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users,” Kristina DeRoy Milvae will discuss the results of two experiments that examined impacts on listening effort. The session will take place May 24 at 12:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.
The first experiment measured how changes in acoustic signal degradation affected listening effort in younger and older adults with normal hearing. Pupil dilation was used as a proxy for listening effort. As people age, highly degraded signals can result in listeners needing to exert even more effort.
In the second experiment, Milvae and her team tested how individual differences in working memory scores affected listening effort in cochlear implant users. Lower working memory scores did not predict increased listening effort.
“A better understanding of listening effort gives a more holistic picture of how we hear,” said Milvae. “Measures of listening effort can help us to better understand the cochlear implant listening experience and help the scientific community to work toward evidence-based approaches to improve listening effort in populations with hearing loss.”
The team’s results emphasize the importance of developing practices to reduce listening effort. Milvae sees three potential paths forward: technological advances in cochlear implants to improve signal clarity, secondary cochlear implants for some users, and aural rehabilitation measures.
“With a cochlear implant, one may be able to better communicate in a noisy restaurant than without. It may take some effort, but with that effort comes the social interaction that was not possible before,” she said. “What is clinically important is to help those who are constantly in a state of high listening effort, which could lead to fatigue and reduced quality of life, because they will want to avoid these social situations.”
WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.
PRESS REGISTRATION We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.
Photo credit: 