Re: Recent progress in profile analysis?

[Peter Meijer <peter.b.l.meijer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All,

Many thanks to all who responded privately to my query 
about recent publications on auditory profile analysis!

Below you will find a summary of replies, including the 
Heinz and Formby reference that I had given as an example:

   H. Gockel and H. Colonius, ``Auditory profile analysis: Is there
   perceptual constancy for spectral shape for stimuli roved in
   frequency?'' J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (JASA), vol. 102, pp. 2311-2315, 1997.

   H. Gockel, ``On possible cues in profile analysis: Identification of 
   the incremented component,'' J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (JASA), vol. 103, pp.
   542-552, 1998.

   M. G. Heinz and C. Formby, ``Detection of time- and bandlimited
   increments and decrements in a random-level noise,'' J. Acoust. Soc.
   Am. (JASA), vol. 106, pp. 313-326, July 1999.

   N. I. Hill and P. J. Bailey, ``Profile analysis with an asynchronous
   target: Evidence for auditory grouping,'' J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (JASA),
   vol. 102, pp. 477-481, 1997.

   J. J. Lentz and V. M. Richards, ``Sensitivity to changes in overall level
   and spectral shape: An evaluation of a channel model,'' J. Acoust.
   Soc. Am. (JASA), vol. 101, pp. 3625-3635, 1997.

   J. J. Lentz and V. M. Richards, ``The effects of amplitude perturbation
   and increasing numbers of components in profile analysis,'' J. Acoust.
   Soc. Am. (JASA), vol. 103, pp. 535-541, 1998.

plus two references for which I have not yet looked up the
details:

   Neff and Dethlefs, JASA, vol. 98, pp. 124-134, 1995.
   Neff and Jesteadt, JASA, vol. 100, pp. 2289-2298, 1996.

Earlier publications can be traced through these references.

The reason for my continued interest in auditory profile 
analysis and auditory grouping/segregation is of course
the unanswered question to what extent visual information
may be presented to blind people via the kind of auditory
display as originally proposed in the IEEE Trans. Biom.
Eng., vol. 39, pp. 112-121, Feb 1992. In other words,
issues like

   What are the basic perceptual limits and what are the 
   limits to human auditory pattern recognition and the 
   human ability to learn and interpret visual information
   through a cross-modal image to sound mapping. 

Those with a playful mind can try the latest experimental
"Internet sonification browser" extension as described at

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/eyebrows.htm

and informally try their own auditory profile analysis 
capabilities on sounds synthesized from on-line images. 
(No screen reader is needed for sighted users.) Clearly, 
this line of work is a major gamble, going well beyond 
what is solidly established from a scientific viewpoint. 
Ideally, I think we can end up with a "meet-in-the-middle" 
situation for certain parameterized classes of images that
correspond closely to the spectrographic data sets like 
those studied in the above references. Lots of things to
explore...

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Soundscapes from The vOICe - Seeing with your Ears!
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/winvoice.htm