C. Erbe et Dm. Farmer, Masked hearing thresholds of a beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) in icebreaker noise, DEEP-SEA II, 45(7), 1998, pp. 1373-1388
Citations number
22
Categorie Soggetti
Aquatic Sciences","Earth Sciences
Journal title
DEEP-SEA RESEARCH PART II-TOPICAL STUDIES IN OCEANOGRAPHY
An experiment is presented that measured masked hearing thresholds of a bel
uga whale at the Vancouver Aquarium. The masked signal was a typical beluga
vocalization; the masking noise included two types of icebreaker noise and
naturally occurring icecracking noise. Thresholds were measured behavioral
ly in a go/no-go paradigm. Results were that bubbler system noise exhibited
the strongest masking effect with a critical noise-to-signal ratio of 15.4
dB. Propeller cavitation noise completely masked the vocalization for nois
e-to-signal ratios greater than 18.0 dB. Natural icecracking noise showed t
he least interference with a threshold at 29.0 dB. A psychophysical analysi
s indicated that the whale did not have a consistent decision bias. (C) 199
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