Yi Shen, PhD

Education

Research

My research interests include Psychoacoustics and Cochlear Mechanics.

I am currently studying Behavioral measurements of level dependence in auditory-filter phase response. To approach this question, I use a psychophysical, masking paradigm using maskers that have the same spectrum and different phase spectra. The efficiency of the masker depends greatly on the phase settings of the masker. When the maskers are harmonic complexes, different phase settings between the harmonics can lead to differences in their ability to mask a pure tone by as much as 20dB. It is generally agreed that if the curvature (second derivative of the phase response) of the masker can cancel the curvature of the cochlea well, it produces a low masking threshold. The level-dependency of this effect hints at a connection to the cochlear nonlinearity. The present project is to identify this relationship to the cochlear nonlinearity and to show that the masker phase effect is probabilistic in nature.

Publications
Shen, Y and Lentz, JJ (2010) "Effect of fast-acting compression on modulation detection interference for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 3654-3665. [pdf]

Shen, Y and Lentz, JJ (2009) "Level dependence in behavioral measurements of auditory-filter phase characteristics," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 126, 2501-2510. [pdf]

Conference Presentations
Shen,Y. and Angelakis,K. "Evaluation of Loudness in a Room Acoustic Model" 120th AES convention 2006, Paris, France

Shen, Y. and Lentz, J.J. (2008). “Phase interactions between auditory filter and complex stimuli: Psychophysical evidence for level dependence in cochlear phase response,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am, 123, 3857(A), Paris

Shen, Y. and Lentz, J.J. (2008). “Modulation detection interference in hearing-impaired listeners with nonlinear amplification,” International Hearing Aid Research Conference 2008, Lake Tahoe.

Shen Y. and Lentz, J.J. (2009). “Modulation detection of sawtooth-wave modulated tones: effect of temporal asymmetry,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125, 2524 (A), Portland.

Shen Y. and Lentz J.J. (2010). “Contribution of non-simultaneous masking in masking period patterns of ramped and damped noises,” presented at the 33rd Midwinter Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Anaheim.

Shen Y. and Lentz. J.J. (2010). “Frequency-specific measurements of the temporal modulation transfer function using narrowband noise,” presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore.

Links:

Acoustic Technology, Technical University of Denmark
http://www.oersted.dtu.dk/English/research/at.aspx

Centre for Applied Hearing Research (CAHR), Technical University of Denmark
http://www.dtu.dk/centre/cahr/English.aspx

Beijing Institute of Technology
http://english.bit.edu.cn/