• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.177-197
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• 2010

Three experiments compared two hypotheses on visual selection; perceptual load hypothesis and dilution hypothesis. The perceptual load hypothesis predicts that perceptual load of task-relevant processing determines the level of task-irrelevant processing whereas the dilution hypothesis predicts that competition for limited-capacity attentional resource, not perceptual load, determines the locus of selection. To compare the two hypotheses, we investigated the influence of perceptual load in visual search on response interference by a distractor. Experiment 1 and 2 manipulated perceptual load by the set size of a search array and the colors of a target and non-targets, respectively. As a result, distractor interference decreased with a set size regardless of perceptual load. In order to further test the set size effect, Experiment 3 manipulated the perceptual categories of non-targets and a distractor. The results showed that distractor interference decreased only when non-targets belonged to the same category as a distractor. Overall, the current findings support the dilution hypothesis, but not the perceptual load hypothesis, and provide the evidence that visual selection is constrained by capacity-limited, category-specific attentional resources.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2022

Lavie's perceptual load theory (Lavie, 1995) proposes that the influence of distractors would be blocked as the load gets higher. Studies of perceptual load have usually adopted the flanker task, developed by Eriksen and Eriksen (1974), which measures reaction time on the target flanked by distractors. In the post-cueing forced task, participants should report the identity of the target cued later, and negative repetition effect (NRE) has often been observed. NRE means the effect that the accuracy of identification is worse when the target is flanked by the same nontargets than when flanked by different nontargets. This study has tried to check whether perceptual load has an effect on identification rate and NRE. Experiment 1 manipulated the similarity between targets and a distractor, and observed a tendency of NRE, but not the effect of perceptual load. Experiment 2 used 4, 2 (in two kinds of diagonal arrangement), or none distractors of the same identity to burden more perceptual load. NRE was significant and perceptual load showed significance but not a linear trend. Experiment 3 checked again whether NRE would be varied according to two levels of perceptual load strengthened by positional variability of load stimuli, but did not find the effect of perceptual load. It is concluded that perceptual load might have a limited effect on the early stage of perceptual processing due to divided attentional processing of the targets briefly exposed. Implications of this study were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.165-184
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• 2012

To investigate how the valence of unattended background picture modulates perceptual processing of a target letter, participants were required to detect a target letter among six letters superimposed on an IAPS picture. Perceptual load was manipulated by varying the difficulty of letter detection, and behavioral results showed more accurate and faster detection responses at the low-load condition than at the high-load condition. The analysis of ERP data of control condition at which six letters were presented without an IAPS picture showed perceptual load effects on mean amplitude of N1 and P1 ERP components. At experimental condition including an IAPS picture, interaction between valence and perceptual load was observed on mean amplitude of N1 at posterior visual processing area, and the amplitude difference between low-load condition and high-load condition was larger on a negative background picture than on a neutral background picture. The results suggest that more attentional capacity might be consumed by a negative picture than by a neutral picture, and suggest that unattended affective picture is processed automatically and influence the early perceptual processing of target stimulus.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

This study investigates perceptual confusions of English fricatives among 121 Korean elementary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with shorter periods of learning English. The objective is to examine how they perceive English fricative consonants and to provide educational guidelines. Two sets of English fricative identification tasks-voiceless fricatives and voiced fricatives-were administered to participants in a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) setting. Their phonemic awareness of the fricatives was visualized in perceptual confusion maps via multidimensional scaling analysis. The findings are explored in terms of the impacts of Korean EFL learners' L1 linguistic aspects and a comparison with L1 learners. Learners' phonemic awareness patterns are then compared with their relative importance in speech intelligibility based on a functional load hierarchy. The results indicated that Korean elementary EFL learners recognized English fricatives in a manner largely akin to L1 learners, suggesting their ongoing acquisition progress. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the young EFL learners possess sufficient phonemic awareness for most high functional load segments but encounter some difficulties with one high and one low functional pair. The findings of this study offer suggestions for diagnosing language learners' phonemic awareness abilities, thereby aiding in the development of practical guidelines for language instructional design and helping educators make informed decisions regarding teaching priority in L2 classes.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.169-174
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• 2003

A novel subspace speech enhancement using subband whitening filter is proposed. Previous subspace speech enhancement method either assumes additive white noise or uses whitening filter as a pre-processing for colored noise. The proposed method tries to minimize the signal distortion while reducing residual noise by processing the signal using subband whitening filter. By incorporating the notion of subband whitening filter, spectral resolution in Karhunen-Loeve(KL) domain is improved with the negligible additional computational load. The proposed method outperforms both the subspace method suggested by Ephraim and the spectral subtraction suggested by Boll in terms of segmental signal-to-noise ratio (SNRseg) and perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ).

• ETRI Journal
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.301-309
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose a parallelization method for a High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) deblocking filter with transform unit (TU) split information. HEVC employs a deblocking filter to boost perceptual quality and coding efficiency. The deblocking filter was designed for data-level parallelism. In this paper, we demonstrate a method of distributing equal workloads to all cores or threads by anticipating the deblocking filter complexity based on the coding unit depth and TU split information. We determined that the average time saving of our proposed deblocking filter parallelization method has a speed-up factor that is 2% better than that of the uniformly distributed parallel deblocking filter, and 6% better than that of coding tree unit row distribution parallelism. In addition, we determined that the speed-up factor of our proposed deblocking filter parallelization method, in terms of percentage run-time, is up to 3.1 compared to the run-time of the HEVC test model 12.0 deblocking filter with a sequential implementation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.113-119
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• 2020

Motor noise is a major concern in order to improve perceptual feeling of car interior sound due to increased motor usage in passenger cars. The purpose of this study is to propose factors that can represent the acoustic performance of motor noise according to the change of load. To this end, at first, it is shown that power spectrum and total loudness are not fit for noise performance, and then, PN_B, partial loudness related to the brush friction component, and PN_R, partial loudness related to the torque ripple component are investigated as factors representing motor noise. The performance curve of motor noise using PN_B and PN_R is proposed to identify trends of motor noise according to the loads. The curve could be a guide for the noise control, the selection of motor, and the improvement of a system.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.253-263
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• 2003

The purposes of this study were to find out an evaluation scale that could predict wear comfort and to investigate the effect of the skin-contacting fiber type on the subjective sensation and microclimate. Sensorial evaluation was basically followed by the Human Perception Analysis (HPA) interviewing 144 consumers. Sixteen female subjects were participated in the sleeve wear test with and without wearing vapor permeable water repellent outerwear. Experimental sleeves were constructed using the same double knit by turning inside out to control other material effects except the skin-contacting fiber type, hence each different side of double knit, cotton side and the cotton/polypropylene blend side, was next to skin in each trial of the experiment. As results, it was noted that the term representing a combined feeling of thermal and wetness sensation, and muggy appeared to be a powerful language to measure perceptual responses of human subject among five dimensions of evaluation. although the ordinary users did not use the term very often. As for the comfort properties of double knits, it seemed that subjects slightly more preferred polypropylene/cotton blend to cotton as the skin-contacting fiber type when they wore outerwear and their skin were covered with sweat, although the result was rot statistically significant and need to be confirmed under higher work load.

• MALSORI
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• no.61
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• pp.75-86
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose a scalable audio coder, which has a variable bandwidth from the narrowband speech bandwidth to the audio bandwidth and also has a bit-rate from 8 to 320 kbits/s, in order to cope with the quality of service(QoS) according to the network load. First of all, the proposed scalable coder splits bandwidth of the input audio into narrowband up to around 4 kHz and above. Next, the narrowband signals are compressed by a speech coding method compatible to an existing standard speech coder such as G.729, and the other signals whose bandwidth is above the narrowband are compressed on the basis of a psychoacoustic model. It is shown from the objective quality tests using the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and the perceptual evaluation of audio quality(PEAQ) that the proposed scalable audio coder provides a comparable quality to the MPEG-1 Layer III (MP3) audio coder.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.1793-1802
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• 2013

Various approaches for sound source segregation have been proposed. Among these approaches, frequency domain binaural model(FDBM) has the advantages of low computational load and effective howling cancellation. A binaural hearing assistance system based on FDBM has been proposed. This system can enhance desired signal based on the directivity information. Although FDBM has been evaluated in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and coherence function, the evaluation results do not always agree with the human impressions. These evaluation methods provide physical measures, and do not take account of perceptual aspect of human being. Considering a binaural hearing assistance system as a one of major applications, the quality of segregated sound should keep level enough. In the paper, signal segregation performance by means of FDBM is evaluated by three objective methods, i.e., SNR, coherence and Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality(PESQ), to discuss the characteristic of FDBM on the sound source segregation performance. The simulation's evaluation results show that FDBM improves the quality of the left and right channel signals to an equivalent level. And the results suggest the possibility that PESQ provides a more useful measure than SNR and coherence in terms of the segregation performance of FDBM. The evaluation results by PESQ show the effects from segregation parameters and indicate appropriate parameters under the conditions. In the paper, signal segregation performance by means of FDBM is evaluated by three objective methods, i.e., SNR, coherence and PESQ, to discuss the characteristic of FDBM on the sound source segregation performance. The simulation's evaluation results show that FDBM improves the quality of the left and right channel signals to an equivalent level. And the results suggest the possibility that PESQ provides a more useful measure than SNR and coherence in terms of the segregation performance of FDBM. The evaluation results by PESQ show the effects from segregation parameters and indicate appropriate parameters under the conditions.