Epstein Michael, Silva Ikaro
Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Auditory Modeling and Processing Laboratory, Communications and Digital Signal Processing Center, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2009 Jun;125(6):3855-64. doi: 10.1121/1.3106531.
There is evidence that tone-burst otoacoustic emissions (TBOAEs) might be useful for estimating loudness. However, within-listener comparisons between loudness and TBOAE measurements are an essential prerequisite to determine appropriate analysis parameters for loudness estimation from TBOAE measurements. The purpose of the present work was to collect TBOAE measurements and loudness estimates across a wide range of levels in the same listeners. Therefore, TBOAEs were recorded for 1- and 4-kHz stimuli and then analyzed using a wide range of parameters to determine which parameter set yielded the lowest mean-square-error estimation of loudness with respect to a psychoacoustical, cross-modality-matching procedure and the inflected exponential (INEX) loudness model. The present results show strong agreement between 1-kHz loudness estimates derived from TBOAEs and loudness estimated using cross-modality matching (CMM), with TBOAE estimation accounting for almost 90% of the CMM variance. Additionally, the results indicate that analysis parameters may vary within a reasonable range without compromising the results (i.e., the estimates exhibit some parametric robustness). The lack of adequate parametric optimization for TBOAEs at 4 kHz suggests that measurements at this frequency are strongly contaminated by ear-canal resonances, meaning that deriving loudness estimates from TBOAEs at this frequency is significantly more challenging than at 1 kHz.
有证据表明，短纯音耳声发射（TBOAE）可能有助于估计响度。然而，在同一受试者内比较响度和TBOAE测量值是确定从TBOAE测量值估计响度的合适分析参数的必要前提。本研究的目的是在同一受试者中收集广泛强度范围内的TBOAE测量值和响度估计值。因此，记录了1 kHz和4 kHz刺激的TBOAE，然后使用多种参数进行分析，以确定相对于心理声学跨模态匹配程序和拐点指数（INEX）响度模型，哪一组参数能产生最低的响度均方误差估计。目前的结果表明，从TBOAE得出的1 kHz响度估计值与使用跨模态匹配（CMM）得出的响度估计值之间有很强的一致性，TBOAE估计值占CMM方差的近90%。此外，结果表明，分析参数在合理范围内变化不会影响结果（即估计值表现出一定的参数稳健性）。4 kHz时TBOAE缺乏足够的参数优化表明，该频率的测量受到耳道共振的强烈影响，这意味着从该频率的TBOAE得出响度估计值比1 kHz时要困难得多。
