Journal article
An online headphone screening test based on dichotic pitch
- Abstract:
- Online experimental platforms can be used as an alternative to, or complement, lab-based research. However, when conducting auditory experiments via online methods, the researcher has limited control over the participants’ listening environment. We offer a new method to probe one aspect of that environment, headphone use. Headphones not only provide better control of sound presentation but can also “shield” the listener from background noise. Here we present a rapid (< 3 min) headphone screening test based on Huggins Pitch (HP), a perceptual phenomenon that can only be detected when stimuli are presented dichotically. We validate this test using a cohort of “Trusted” online participants who completed the test using both headphones and loudspeakers. The same participants were also used to test an existing headphone test (AP test; Woods et al., 2017, Attention Perception Psychophysics). We demonstrate that compared to the AP test, the HP test has a higher selectivity for headphone users, rendering it as a compelling alternative to existing methods. Overall, the new HP test correctly detects 80% of headphone users and has a false-positive rate of 20%. Moreover, we demonstrate that combining the HP test with an additional test–either the AP test or an alternative based on a beat test (BT)–can lower the false-positive rate to ~ 7%. This should be useful in situations where headphone use is particularly critical (e.g., dichotic or spatial manipulations). Code for implementing the new tests is publicly available in JavaScript and through Gorilla (gorilla.sc).
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 2.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.3758/s13428-020-01514-0
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Behavior Research Methods More from this journal
- Volume:
- 53
- Pages:
- 1551-1562
- Publication date:
- 2020-12-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-11-15
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1554-3528
- ISSN:
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1554-351X
- Pmid:
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33300103
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1149026
- Local pid:
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pubs:1149026
- Deposit date:
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2021-03-22
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Milne et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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