The only picture of me I had to hand.

Trevor Agus

Postal address: Equipe Audition, Département d'études cognitives, Ecole normale supérieure, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75230 Paris cedex 05, France
Contact: trevor.agus@ens.fr

Research Interests

I am currently researching how we learn to recognise sounds. I hope to uncover the processes by which we can identify sounds and categories of sounds with such apparent ease. Currently, I am focusing on the learning of noises (which all sound just like a hiss initially), using psychoacoustical techniques (measuring listeners' ability to accurately report aspects the sounds). I have also been working on reaction times to natural sounds, showing that we are particularly fast to selectively respond to the human voice. This work is carried out with Daniel Pressnitzer, in collaboration with Laurent Demany, Clara Suied, and Simon Thorpe.  

Previously, I researched elderly listeners' ability to understand one talker while ignoring a competing talker. Some of their difficulty can be explained by the mere acoustics of the competing speech ("energetic masking") but an additional component ("informational masking") seems to be related to the extra challenge of distinguishing the two talkers. Energetic masking is generally associated with processes in the ear; informational masking is generally associated with peripheral or central processes in the brain. It was expected that elderly listeners would be more susceptible to informational masking, since elderly listeners often complain of difficulty understanding one talker in the presence of another. But the results showed that young and elderly listeners were equally susceptible to informational masking; their differences in performance seem best explained by energetic-masking effects. This research was carred out at the Institute of Hearing Research Scottish Section under the supervision of Michael Akeroyd, in conjunction with the University of Strathclyde Psychology department.

For a copy of my PhD thesis, please contact me at trevor.agus@ens.fr.

Publications

Agus, T.R., Thorpe, S.J., Pressnitzer, D. (2010) Rapid formation of robust auditory memories: Insights from noise. Neuron 66:610-618. DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2010.04.014 [Supplemental information]

Agus, T.R., and Akeroyd, M.A. (2009). Informational masking in young and elderly listeners for speech masked by simultaneous speech and noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society America 126(4), 1926-1940. DOI: 10.1121/1.3205403

Agus, T.R., and Akeroyd, M.A. (2009). An analysis of the masking of speech by competing speech using self-report data (L). Journal of the Acoustical Society America 125(1), 23-26. DOI: 10.1121/1.3025915

Conference proceedings

Agus, T.R., Suied, C., Thorpe, S.J., Pressnitzer, D. (2010). Characteristics of human voice processing. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (May-June 2010). Paris.

Agus, T.R., Beauvais, M., Thorpe, S.J., Pressnitzer, D. (2009). The implicit learning of noise: Behavioral data and computational models. In: 15th International Symposium on Hearing (June 2009) (Lopez-Poveda, E.A., Palmer, A.R., Meddis, R., eds). Salamanca, Spain: Springer-Verlag.