Schlauch Laboratory

Publications with Students

   

  

    My former and current students who have published papers in peer-reviewed journals with me are highlighted in blue below. Some photos of current students are shown below.  Some photos of current students appear below.

  

    Jahner, J.,Schlauch, R.S., & Doyle, T.  (1994).  “A comparison of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association guidelines for comparing speech recognition thresholds,”  Ear and Hearing l5, 324-329.

 

    Schlauch, R.S., & Morison, L.M.  (1995).  “The spectral spread of loudness adaptation for tones that decrease continu­ously in level,” Acustica 8l, 279-280

 

    Schlauch, R.S., Harvey, S. & Lanthier, N. (1995). “Intensity resolution and loudness in broadband noise,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 98, 1895-1902.

  

    Schlauch, R.S., Levine, S., Li, Y., & Haines, S. (1995). “Evaluat­ing hearing threshold differences between ears as a screen for acoustic neuroma,” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38, 1168-1175.

  

    Schlauch, R.S.,Arnce, K.D., Morison, L.M., Sanchez, S., & Doyle, T.N.   (1996). “Identification of pseudohypacusis using speech recognition thresholds,”Ear and Hearing 17, 229-236. (1,3,4,6)

 

    Mineau, S.,& Schlauch, R.S.  (1997). “Threshold measurement in patients with tinnitus: Pulsed or continuous tones,”  American Journal of Audiology 6, 52-56.

  

    Schlauch, R.S., Lanthier, N., & Neve, J. (1997).  “Forward masked intensity discrimination: Duration and spectral effects,”Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 461-467.

 

    Schlauch, R.S., DiGiovanni, J.J., and Ries, D.T. (1998). “Basilar membrane nonlinearity and loudness,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of  America 103, 2010-2020.

  

    Schlauch, R.S., Clement, B.R., Ries, D.T., and DiGiovanni, J.J.(1999). “Masker laterality and cueing in forward-masked intensity discrimination,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 105, 822-828.

  

Ries, D.T., Rickert, M.and Schlauch, R.S. (1999).  “The peaked audiometric configuration in Meniere’s disease: disease related?,” Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research 105, 822-828.

 

Hunter, L.L., Ries, D.T., Schlauch, R.S., Levine, S.C., and Ward, W.D. (1999). “Safety and clinical performance of acoustic  reflex   tests,” Ear and Hearing 20, 506-514.

  

Schlauch, R.S., Ries, D.T. and DiGiovanni, J.J. (2001). “Duration discrimination, and subjective duration for ramped and damped sounds,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 2880-2887.

  

 DiGiovanni, J.J.,Nelson, P. and Schlauch, R. (2005). “A psychophysical evaluation of spectral enhancement,” Journal of Speech, Language, Hearing Research 48, 1121-1135.

  

 Opperman, D.A.,Reifman, W., Schlauch, R..S. and Levine, S. (2006). “Incidence of spontaneous hearing threshold shifts during modern concert performances,”  Otololaryngology Head. and Neck Surgery 134, 667-673.

 

DiGiovanni, J.J.and Schlauch, R.S. (2007). “Mechanisms responsible for differences in perceived  duration for rising-intensity and falling-intensity sounds,” Ecological Psychology 19(3), 239-264.

 

Ries, D.T., Schlauch, R.S. and DiGiovanni, J. (2008). The role of temporal  masking patterns in the determination of subjective duration and loudness for  ramped and damped sounds. Journal of the Acoustical Society of  America, 124(6):3772-3783. 

 

Miller, S., Schlauch, R.S., and Watson, P.J. (2010).  The effects of fundamental frequency contour manipulations on speech intelligibility in background noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128(1), 435-443.

          Sharon Miller  was featured in a University of Minnesota E-newsletter! 

 

Jin, S., Nelson, P.B., Schlauch, R.S. and Carney E. (2013). Hearing Conservation            Program for Students in Marching Band: Do hearing tests Indicate the Risk for Noise-Induced Hearing Loss?, American Journal of Audiology, 22, 26-39.

 

Schlauch, R.S., Anderson, E.S., and Micheyl, C. (2014). A demonstration of improved precision of word-recognition scores. Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research, 57, 543-555. 

Han, H.J., Schlauch, R.S. and Rao, A. (2014).  The effect of visual cues on the scoring of clinical word-recognition tests. American Journal  of  Audiology. doi:10.1044/2014_AJA-14-0024.

 Schlauch, R.S., Koerner, T. and Marshall, L. (2015).  Effective identification of functional hearing loss using behavioral threshold measures  Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research, 58, 452-465.

Zhang, Y., Cheng, B., Koerner, T. K., Schlauch, R. S.,Tanaka, K., Kawakatsu, M., ... & Imada, T. (2016). Perceptual TemporalAsymmetry Associated with Distinct ON and OFF Responses to Time-Varying Sounds with Rising versus Falling Intensity: A Magnetoencephalography Study. Brain Sciences, 6(3), 27.

Schlauch, R.S., Han, H.J., Yu, T.L. and Carney, E. (2017).  Pure tone-spondee threshold relationships in functional hearing loss: a test of loudness' contribution. Journal of Speech, Language, Hearing Research, 60:136-143. doi:10.1044/2016.

Basu, S., Schlauch, R.S. and Sasisekaran, J. (2018). Backward masking of tones and speech in people who stutter and do not stutter.  Journal of Fluency Disorders, 57, 11-21. 

Yu, T.L. and Schlauch, R.S. (in press). Diagnostic precision of open-set versus closed-set word recognition testing. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research.

Below is a photo of Tzu-Ling Yu and me with a poster we presented at the 2016 meeting of the American Auditory Society.  The poster content was published in JSLHR in 2016 with Heekyung Han and Edward Carney. Tzu-Ling and Heekyung are current Ph.D. students in my lab. 

 

 

Below is a poster presented at the American Auditory Society in March 2014 with Ph.D. student Heekyung Han and Dr. Aparna Rao. Heekyung and I are in the photo below.  The study's results are published in the American Journal of Audiology.

Below is a photo of Andrew Kersten, a former AuD advisee, and Tzu-Ling Yu who worked on a project to document the performance of prototype musician earplugs for a company named "Vibes." The earplug that was developed was featured on an episode of Shark Tank.

 

 

One of our most recent projects has a goal of to develop a simple test for unilateral feigned hearing loss.  Sarah Rosen and Tzu-Ling Yu are working with me on this study.

  

The Effectiveness of Earglasses: An Honors Project

Prior to the invention of electrically powered amplifiers, persons with hearing loss relied on mechanical devices to to direct and amplify sound.  This image to the left shows a page from a 1904 Sears Catalog depicting a variety of devices available at that time.

You don't have to shop for antiques on Ebay to find a passive sound amplifier. In the early 21st century, Earglasses, which are similar in concept to the auricles pictured in the Sears Catalog, became available.  I purchased a pair from one of those catalogs that are mailed to every residence within a particular zip code.  The Earglasses are shown here in the original ad.

An honors student in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences who was enrolled in my Hearing Science course signed up for an honors contract to measure the effectiveness of the Earglasses. 

She worked with a graduate student in Audiology to make measurements using a hearing aid test box.  The hearing aid test box generated a wideband sound that was produced by a speaker. This is how the effectiveness was tested.

1. A  small microphone placed near the eardrum of a subject to measure sound level in one ear.

2. The loudspeaker generating a wideband sound was rotated 360 deg (azimuth) around the subject's head while the sound pressure level was measured.  These measurements were made with and without the Earglasses.

3. The difference in level (in dB) between what was measured with and without the Earglasses represents how sound was changed by the Earglasses.

4. The plots below  show the results for two azimuths. The 0 deg plot (upper figure) was obtained with the speaker about 1 meter from the subject's head and directly in front of him.  A useful device would amplify the sound yet there is very little difference in dB between the two conditions (with and without Earglasses).  The lower plot shows results from 180 deg, directly behind the person.  Sound was reduced a few dB in the high frequencies and not at all in the low frequencies (this is expected because the wavelength at low frequencies is longer and can wrap around the device).  Although this is a favorable oucome, the difference in dB is small. 

We concluded the a wearer of Earglasses would probably not experience meaningful changes in their ability to communicate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CD Power, Loudness Wars, and Risk of Hearing Loss: An Honors Project

Honors Students in the BA degree program in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences have an option of signing up for an honors contract while completing a course in their major.  This fulfills an honors degree requirement.  Students electing this option complete the regular requirements for a course as well as an additional project designed for the student by the professor who offers the course. 

 

Here is Marie's project that examined a sample of rock music CD's from 1990 to 2010.  The goals of her project were to: 1) document the trend for RMS (root-mean-square) power of CDs to learn if power increases over time (the year the CD was mastered) in her sample.  This trend has been reported elsewhere and 2)  to infer what the consequences might be for risk of hearing loss for persons who listen to CDs with different RMS levels without changing the volume control (for instance, while jogging).   

 

The text, tables and figures that follow comprise Marie's report that was submitted to fulfill her honors contract for my undergraduate hearing science course. 

 

Methods

 

Using CD recordings of popular rock music ranging from 1990 to 2010, Praat software was used to obtain average RMS power of a sample of the recording. Samples were taken from five different albums for each two-year length of time. In each CD, a released single song was used, and RMS measurements were taken using 60 second samples (from time 1:00 to 2:00).

      

 

Results

Artist	Song	Rel. Year	Avg RMS Power (dB)*
Nirvana	Smells like Teen Spirit	1991	78.46027
Nirvana	Come As You Are	1991	77.87609
Pearl Jam	Alive	1991	80.09812
Pearl Jam	Even Flow	1991	79.77917
Nirvana	Heart Shaped Box	1993	79.99189
Nirvana	All Apologies	1993	79.00152
Alice in Chains	Down in a Hole	1992	81.27465
Alice in Chains	Rooster	1992	74.93313
Alice in Chains	Grind	1995	82.3233
Alice in Chains	Heaven Beside You	1995	80.7176
Pearl Jam	Spin the Black Circle	1994	82.52034
Pearl Jam	Not for You	1994	81.56941
Matchbox 20	Push	1996	81.01531
Matchbox 20	3 AM	1996	80.34982
Creed	What's This Life For?	1997	82.12753
Creed	My Own Prison	1997	81.7389
Eve 6	Inside Out	1998	81.673
Eve 6	Leech	1998	81.26283
Blink-182	What's My Age Again?	1999	81.42304
Blink-182	All the Small Things	1999	84.00382
Godsmack	Awake	2000	83.70529
Godsmack	Greed	2000	84.43933
Creed	Higher	2000	81.97862
Creed	With Arms Wide Open	2000	80.63681
3 Doors Down	When I'm Gone	2002	82.67307
3 Doors Down	Here Without You	2002	81.51279
Red Hot Chili Peppers	By the Way	2002	82.677
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Can't Stop	2002	83.40131
Green Day	American Idiot	2004	85.26495
Green Day	Boulevard of Broken Dreams	2004	84.52495
3 Doors Down	Let Me Go	2005	83.46834
3 Doors Down	Behind Those Eyes	2005	83.43522
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Dani California	2006	84.32203
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Hump de Bump	2006	83.05219
Audioslave	Revelations	2006	84.6185
Audioslave	Original Fire	2006	85.04295
Hurt	Wars	2009	82.28482
Hurt	Pills	2009	83.17376
The Killers	Human	2008	82.96131
The Killers	Spaceman	2008	83.87393

*dB SPL values arbitrary in the table and are only useful for comparison with each other. dB SPL levels were calculated from Pa using the formula 20LOG₁₀(X/2x10^-5). Actual decibel level would depend on the volume setting of the music device.

 

 

A trend toward increasing intensity was found for the forty rock music samples. dB levels of samples from 1990 to 1993 were averaged (78.92 dB) and subtracted from the average of 2005 to 2009 samples (83.83 dB), and a 4.9 dB SPL change overall was found.

 

Discussion of Potential Hearing Risk

 

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) sets a standard for hearing safety in noise in an effort to prevent occupational hearing loss. NIOSH specifies that the maximum permissible level of noise is 85 dB SPL. At 85 dB, workers are allowed a 100% noise dose, which is defined as “noise exposure expressed as a percentage of the allowable daily [work day] exposure.” So, a 100% noise dose at maximum permissible level means hearing 85 dB noise for 8 hours. NIOSH considers this to be the safety cutoff for noise. To determine noise dose for sounds louder or softer than 85 dB, NIOSH uses a 3 dB exchange rate, sometimes referred to as a doubling rate. NIOSH specifies that for every 3 dB increase in intensity, noise dose is considered to double. This means that for every 3 dB increase, safe listening time is halved. An 85 dB noise can be listened to for 8 hours without damaging hearing, but an 88 dB noise can only be listened to for 4 hours. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/96-110/appA.html

 

What does this mean for music intensity and hearing damage? Zalewski and Baur (2008) measured Preferred Loudness Levels (PLL) of men and women who used portabe mp3 devices. They found that when listening to music devices in noise (similar to the experience of wearing earbuds in an outdoor or public setting) men set their devices at 91.94 dB and women at 84.53 dB SPL. Applying NIOSH standards, men can only safely listen to their music for less than 2 hours, and women safely around 8. If listeners set their PLL for a song released in 1990 during shuffled play, music released later, which may be 4.9 dB louder, can damage their hearing in much less time.