Ph.D.

Psychology of Hearing

Research activities
The current research themes are the following: (1) auditory short-term memory, (2) pitch perception of speech, and (3) English consonant perception under noise by Japanese-native speakers. The third theme is a collaboration work with ATR Human Information Science Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. He is a member of the Perceptual Psychology Unit of the governmental "Center of Excellence" (COE) program entitled "Design of Artificial Environments on the Basis of Human Sensibility," Kyushu University, since 2003. He has been joining membership of "Center for Applied Perceptual Research," since its foundation in 2010.

Educational activities
He supervises some undergraduate and graduate students. He teaches Psychology of Hearing, Auditory Perception and Cognition, Perceptual Psychology, Science of Auditory and Visual Perception, etc. He had taught Psychology, Perceptual Psychology, Experimental Design, etc. at Kyoto Prefectural University.

Social activities
He has experienced managements in publishing and research meetings at the Acoustical Society of Japan and at the Japanese Society for Music Perception and Cognition.

Research Interests

• Factor analyses of critical-band-filtered speech and perception of noise-vocoded speech
  keyword : Power fluctuation, frequency bands, noise-vocoded speech
  2007.04.
• Speech perception under noise and training effect.
• Short-term auditory memory for speech and nonspeech.
• Pitch perception of speech sounds.

Current and Past Project

• A series of experiments is planned to use results from Ueda & Naka jima (2008) in order to produce speech which is degraded in systematical ways. Specifically, noise-vocoded speech shall be produced that lacks the spectral fine-structure of the original recording, and that permits to systematically vary the number of frequency channels used in the synthesis. Furthermore, conventional critical-band based synthesis methods shall be compared with ones that partition the audible frequency range into ’meaningful’ units as determined by Ueda, Naka jima & Araki (2009). Finally, input signals other than noise may be used for the vocoder. The stimuli thus generated may serve as interfering background in ’irrelvant speech’ type paradigms as studied by Ellermeier & Zimmer (1997) or Zimmer, Ghani & Ellermeier (2008). The results may elucidate what makes sounds ’speech-like’ and what are the acoustical properties that produce the greatest degree of memory impairment in the irrelevant sound paradigm. Simultaneously they serve to validate the concept of speech-based auditory universals proposed by Ueda et al. (2009). Several aural presentations and poster presentations were conducted (e.g., Ueda, Nakajima, Doumoto, Ellemeier, and Kattner, 2011; Ellemeier, Kattner, Ueda, Nakajima, and Doumoto, 2012).

Academic Activities

Educational Activities

Professional and Outreach Activities