We have documented several surprising findings related to the role of amplitude envelope in auditory processing in recent years. From sensory integration to audio-visual association and even duration processing, the simplistic amplitude invariant sounds dominant in auditory research fail to generalize to sounds synthesized with the types of rapid changes common in natural sounds.
In this special issue of Canadian Acoustics, Dr. Schutz overviews a series of the lab’s recent findings on the crucial role of amplitude envelope in auditory processing. He also discusses the important implications of this work for a variety of applied situations, including the design of auditory alarms in medical devices which have not yet realized their potential for improving patient monitoring in hospital settings.
Graduate student Lorraine Chuen successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis, titled “Evaluating the influence of audiovisual unity in temporal binding of musical stimuli” and will now graduate with her Masters degree. She will soon be moving to Toronto to work at the MaRS Discovery District as a Studio [Y] Fellow.
Dominique Beauregard Cazabon presented a poster at the Acoustical Society of America’s spring meeting. The poster was entitled “The effect of amplitude envelope on spatial ventriloquism” and presented results from a pilot study aiming to determine whether amplitude envelope affects the way we integrate audiovisual information in the spatial dimension. This is the first step in a series of experiments aimed at exploring the role of temporal structure in the spatial localization of sounds.
