Biography

Cleo has a degree in music production from the Academy of Contemporary Music and also holds a bachelors degree in law from the University of Surrey.  In 2009 she was awarded an MSc in Psychological Research Methods with distinction and has since worked at Barts and the London School of Medicine as a research statistician and statistics lecturer.  

Cleo's PhD research focuses on developing psychophysical models of auditory adaptation and is funded by the EPSRC and the Marion Redfearn trust.  As well as psychoacoustic engineering, Cleo is interested in comparative and evolutionary psychology and psychiatry.  She is a graduate member of the British Psychological Society and a member of the Audio Engineering Society.  Her hobbies include listening to classical and film music and singing with Vox chamber choir.

Research Project

Auditory adaptation is a complex sensory phenomenon that arises in various aspects of the perception of sounds (Canevet & Meunier, 1994).  Adaptation is often described as the adjustment over time to the intensity of a stimulus.  For example, adaptation to loudness has been defined as a ‘decay in the magnitude of the response of the auditory system to constant intensity stimulation’ (Hood 1950).  The neural basis for most observed auditory adaptation effects is thought to be the declining activity in auditory neurons that results from steady stimulation (Derbyshire & Davis, 1935).  

Perceptually speaking, however, adaptation does not only result in sensations of diminishing intensity but might lead to a variety of responses, including the enhancement of all or part of an auditory stimulus (e.g. aftereffects, enhancement effects and context effects).  Based on research into these effects, it has been suggested that adaptation might function to enhance and draw attention to stimuli that signal a change in the acoustical environment (Adrian, 1928; von Békésy, 1967). Furthermore, it appears that adaptation acts as a stabilising mechanism in response to change allowing an organism to maintain equilibrium.  This can be seen in an example from the visual domain where, via the process of chromatic adaption or ‘colour constancy’, the perception of colour remains consistent over variations in illumination (von Kries, 1878).

The current project aims to determine how adaptation aids the perception of acoustically relevant changes (e.g. changes in the spatial location of a sound or the shape of an acoustical environment) yet also allows listeners to maintain constant perceptions across ‘disruptive’ changes in environment, such as spectral distortion or reverberation.   

So far literature reviews have revealed that specific areas where adaptation to timbral and spatial features of sound might have a useful role include: the separation of sound sources in a busy acoustical environment, maintaining constancy and intelligibility of sound sources (e.g speech) across reverberant environments, and reducing perceptual overload from redundant sensory messages. Further reviews of the literature on auditory adaptation will determine whether adaptation to spatial and timbral features share common neural and cognitive mechanisms, as well as considering how research into adaptation might benefit sound recording/reproduction and psychoacoustic research (e.g by informing models of human hearing and listening test methodology). Listening tests will then establish the duration, magnitude and nature of adaptation effects.

Adrian, E.D. (1928). The Basis of Sensation: The Action of the Sense Organs. N.W. Norton, New York.

Canevet, G. and Meunier, S. (1994). Adaptation Auditive et Localisation. Journal de Physique, 4, c5395-c5398.

Hood, J.D. (1950). Studies in auditory fatigue and adaptation. Acta Oto-Laryngol,  92, 1–57.

von Békésy, G. (1967). Sensory Inhibition. Princeton University Press.

von Kries, J. (1878). Beitrag zur Physiologie der Gesichtsempfindungen. Archiv für Physiologie 2, 503-524.