Virginia M. Richards

Research Interests
My research interests include human perception, cognition, and mathematical psychology as applied to the perception of complex sounds. Using psychophysical techniques, we study the rules governing low-level auditory processing and the possible mechanisms by which multiple sound sources are segregated. Recent work has been aimed at the development and testing of multiple-channel models of masking that depend on both energetic and temporal aspects of complex sounds. At present, the goal is to extend this work into the realm of perceptual organization, including "auditory streaming" and the detection of a target pattern of sounds against a background of distracter sounds. Both psychophysical experiments and the allied processing models depend on digital signal processing techniques in which acoustical features are independently varied, allowing the determination of the relative contribution of the different cues as well as the underlying combination rules.

Papers that may help to more clearly describe these sorts of experiments and psychophysical methods include:

• Richards, V.M., and Lentz, J.J. (1998). Sensitivity to Changes in Level and Envelope Patterns Across Frequency. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 104, 3019-3029.
  
  
• Richards, V.M. (2002). The Detection of a Tone Added to Noise: Effects of Feedback Variation. J. Assoc. Res. Otolaryn, 03,
  209-221.
  
  
• Richards, V.M., and Neff D.L. (2004). Cueing Effects for Informatoinal Masking. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 115, 289-300.
  
  
• Huang, R., and Richards, V.M. (2006). "Coherence detection: Effects of frequency, frequency uncertainty, and onset/offset delays". J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 119, 2298-2304.
  
  
• Shub, D.E., and Richards, V.M. (2009). Psychophysical spectro-temporal receptive fields in an auditory task Hearing Research, 251, 1-9.
  
  

Teaching

F 13: PSYCH 101A, Honors Seminar in Psychology
F 13: PSYCH 202A, Proseminar

Office hours: SBSG 2326 Tuesday 4:00-5:00

Virginia M. Richards
Professor
Department of Cognitive Science
University of California
Social Science Lab
Irvine, CA 92697-5100

949.824.2051  (phone)
v.m.richards at uci.edu