James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2016
SPPA 2060: Hearing Science
I. Texts
Required:
(1) Deutsch and Richards (D&R), Elementary Hearing Science (This is not in the
bookstore. We’ll talk about how you can get the text in class.)
(2) Online: Chapters from Hillenbrand, Principles of Speech and
Hearing Science (Download from: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/206.html)
II. Grading
Your grade for the course will be based on three exams and at least one quiz:
Exam 1 (28%)
Exam 2 (28%)
Exam 3 (38.0%)
Quiz (6.0%)
How to figure your final grade (assuming no other quizzes are added): (exam1 x 0.28) +
(exam2 x 0.28) + (exam3 x 0.38) + (quiz x 0.06). Example: exam1=90, exam2=88, exam3=93,
quiz=80. Final grade = (90 x 0.28) + (88 x 0.28) + (93 x 0.28) + (80 x 0.06) =
25.2+24.64+35.34+4.8 = 89.98  90.
Exams will be a combination of short answer, short essay, multiple choice, and making and/or
labeling drawings. The dates for exams 1 and 2 will be announced at least a week in advance.
Approximate dates for exams 1 and 2 are given below:
Exam 1:
Exam 2:
~Feb 26
~Mar 26
Exact dates for the exams will depend on where we are in the lectures. Exam 1 will be given at
the end of the section on acoustics – but before the lecture on the decibel scale. (A quiz on the
decibel scale will be given as soon as this material is covered in class.) Exam 2 will be given
toward the end of the anatomy and physiology section, but before the lectures on the central
auditory system and the vestibular system. We will follow the course outline (attached) pretty
closely, so looking at the outline will give you a decent idea about when we are getting close to
an exam. The seams where exams 1 and 2 are given are clearly marked on the course
outline. If you are worried that an exam might be close, ask me.
The final exam will be comprehensive, but with greater emphasis on the new material since
exam 2. The date for the final is published in the schedule of classes.
NOTE: You will not find a listing for 12:30 classes. Our final exam time and date will be the
one listed for 12:00 noon. There may be additional quizzes, in which case adjustments will have
to be made to the weighting scheme above.
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
Assignment of letter grades to scores will occur using something fairly close to the scheme
shown below. Adjustments might be made to this scheme depending on the exact distribution of
grades in the class.
93–100:
88- 92:
83- 87:
80 -82:
70-79:
65 -69:
below 65:
A
BA
B
CB
C
D
E
Assignments. There may be a small number of homework assignments that are graded pass/fail.
Failure to turn these assignments in (and on time) will result in a two-point deduction from
your final grade. If there is something wrong with your assignment you will be given one chance
to fix the problem(s) and resubmit no later than one week from the original due date.
III. Attendance
I will not take attendance unless there appears to be a widespread problem. However, experience
has shown that even fairly minor attendance problems can sometimes create problems in this
course. This seems to be especially true of the material that is covered in the first third of the
course. Unless there is a scheduled exam, you do not need to call or email me if you are unable
to make a particular class meeting. However, if you have something going on affecting more
than one class meeting (health problems, family issues, etc.) please do let me know. Use your
own judgment about weather and driving conditions, regardless of whether the University is
officially closed. You are way better off missing a class than getting into a car wreck.
IV. Office
CHHS 4468, 387-8066
Office Hours: T,Th 1:45-3:00, or by appointment. Please let me know (phone or email) if
you’re planning to see me during office hours. Note: I get very few visitors
during office hours, so I do not necessarily hold that time open if I have
other obligations. But let me know you’re coming and I’ll be there.
Homepage: homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr
2060 page: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/206.html
Email:
james.hillenbrand@wmich.edu Note: I’m happy to answer questions sent
by email if the question can be answered in a sentence or two. If the
answer requires an essay I’ll ask you to stop by my office.
V. Advice
Most of you will not find this to be an unusually difficult course. Over the years, the average
final grade in this course has generally been around the mid-80s, with most students receiving
either an A or a B. However, experience has shown that there is an important minority of
Page 2
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
students who will have some trouble. There are several straightforward things that you can do to
avoid trouble.
1. Pay attention in class and take good notes. This sounds like a very simple thing because it
is, but a fair number of students do not do it. This is the single most important thing you can
do. When you leave the lecture hall you should have a decent understanding of most of the
material that has been taught. This is far more valuable than spending long hours preparing
for exams. The importance of this simple idea is illustrated by an experiment that I
unintentionally carried out a little while ago.
The parable of the vestibular system. To illustrate how important this point is, I’ll describe
the most important accidental experiment of my career. This happened a few years ago in this
course. We had an exam coming up and I was taking questions about the exam. The last topic
we had covered was a short lecture on the vestibular system, and I was asked if that material
would be on the exam. Ordinarily this material is included, but we had covered quite a bit of
material since the previous exam, so I made a last-minute decision to save the vestibular
system material for the next exam. However, I accidentally printed off a version of the exam
with six questions (12 points) about the vestibular system. It was not until the end of the
exam session that a student pointed this out to me. So, I did the obvious thing and announced
that I would not count the vestibular system questions that should not have been on the exam.
(Important Note: None of these questions were difficult. I only spend about 40 minutes on
this topic, and the six questions that should not have been there covered only the basics.) So
far, all we have is a story about a teacher who is a jelly brain, which is not newsworthy. But
here’s the revealing part of the story. I graded the vestibular system questions, though I did
not include them when calculating exam scores. But now, for each student, I had a score for
the vestibular system questions and a separate score – the real one – based on everything
except the vestibular-system questions. What I thought I noticed was that students who did
well on the vestibular system questions seemed to be doing well on the remainder of the
exam. I checked this in a simple way: I sorted the scores based on performance on the
vestibular system questions, then split the class into a top half and a bottom half based only
on the vestibular-system scores. The average exam score (with the vestibular questions
tossed out) for students in the top half was a 91, and the average for the bottom half was a 74.
These two averages are night and day, and there is only one way to explain the difference.
The students with the average of 91 did not know the vestibular system material because they
had studied it. No one had studied that material. So how did they know this material so well?
Easy: these students must have learned the concepts right then and there on the day this
material was discussed in class, and/or they learned it from the readings (almost certainly
some of both). More importantly, since they did so well on the remainder of the exam, they
must take this learn-concepts-as-they-are-taught approach to everything. On the other hand,
students in the bottom half, whether they are consciously aware of it or not (and my guess is
that usually they are not), must tend to let things slide, forcing them to rely heavily on long
hours of study prior to exams; i.e., cramming. This accidental experiment shows very clearly
that the cramming strategy does not work well. It also shows that learning things as they are
taught, rather than a great fury of studying in the last few days before an exam, is not only far
more effective, it is the lazy way to do things. Students who keep up with things put much
less time into their school work than crammers do. When exam time rolls around, slow-and-
Page 3
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
steady students do not have all the much to do. So, there you have it. Take the lazy way out
and learn things as they are taught.
2. Don't miss class, especially in the beginning of the course. If you have to miss class for some
reason, study the notes from a student or students whose work habits you trust. (This will not
necessarily be your best buddy.)
3. The material is quite learnable. If you get it into your head early on that this stuff is too
technical and too weird and you can't learn it, you are pretty well guaranteed to have trouble.
4. Keep up with things. If you wait until a day or two before the exam to study, it can
sometimes be very difficult to put things together. Paying attention in class, taking good
notes, keeping up with the readings, and reviewing your notes between classes are the most
important things that you can do. A modest amount of time invested in these ways is far more
important than many hours of cramming for exams. If your find yourself putting in long
hours preparing for exams it’s pretty well guaranteed that you are not keeping up well
enough. This is true of all your classes, in my opinion.
5. Waves and graphs. An item on our course evaluations asks the student for an opinion about
the least valuable aspect of the course. Some years ago a student gave this three-word
response: “Waves and graphs.” I found this very discouraging. Your goal in this course is to
understand the fundamentals of the ear and that part of the nervous system that processes
auditory sensations. This cannot be done without understanding some basic principles of
acoustics. I try very hard to teach these concepts with as little technical detail as possible, but
these ideas cannot be understood without understanding the meaning of a small number of
very important graphs. For example, the first one that will be introduced is a sound wave,
which is a graph that shows how air pressure changes over time. It is extremely important
that you learn, as quickly as possible, (a) what is on the horizontal axis (for a sound wave, it
is time) and what is on the vertical axis (for a sound wave, it is instantaneous air pressure),
and (b) what that graph tells you about the sound that this graph describes. The main point I
am trying to make here is that your life will be far easier if you learn (once again, as soon as
possible) what these graphs are all about; i.e., what the axis labels are, and what the graph is
telling you about the sound that is being described. The good news is that you will only need
to learn a small number of these basic types of graphs. But without this basic understanding
you will be reduced to trying to memorize a bunch of meaningless squiggles.
6. If you have difficulty interpreting these graphs, or with any other aspect of the course, I am
available to provide help outside of class and am very willing to spend time with you.
7. Focus on understanding the material. If you understand how sound and the auditory
system work, along with the little bit of basic anatomy that we cover, your exam grades will
take care of themselves.
Page 4
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
VI. Readings
The readings for each major section of the course are given in the course outline. Note that the
outline does not tell you what you should read on the 17th of January, and what to read on the
19th, and so on. You can make decisions on these details on your own. The sequence of topics
that are listed in the course outline matches the sequence of topics that are covered in the
lectures. I recommend that you read ahead of the lectures rather than behind them. Please
download the online material in the 1st week or so. I only have so much disk space on my web
page and I remove that material as soon as I can. Last point: I strongly recommend that you
actually do the readings. I was surprised to learn a little while ago that a significant number of
students are not in the habit of doing the readings. It may be possible to do well in a course
without doing the readings, although I doubt that this is common, and I find it hard to believe
that this is the easy way to do it.
VII. Final exam date
The date for the final exam is listed in the schedule of classes. It’s also available online. Do a
web search for wmu final exam schedule spring 2014 (or whatever the actual year happens to
be). You will see that times listed for 12:00 and 1:00, but not 12:30. Our exam time is one listed
for 12:00. If that’s wrong I’ll let you know.
VIII. Academic honesty, diversity, religious observance, and student disabilities
You are responsible for making yourself aware of and understanding the policies and procedures
in the Undergraduate and Graduate Catalogs that pertain to Academic Honesty. These policies
include cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple submission, plagiarism,
complicity and computer misuse. [The policies can be found at http://catalog.wmich.edu under
Academic Policies, Student Rights and Responsibilities.] If there is reason to believe you have
been involved in academic dishonesty, you will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct.
You will be given the opportunity to review the charge(s). If you believe you are not responsible,
you will have the opportunity for a hearing. You should consult with your instructor if you are
uncertain about an issue of academic honesty prior to the submission of an assignment or test.
For information on the Code of Honor, and general academic policies on such issues as diversity,
religious observance, and student disabilities, see http://osc.wmich.edu and
www.wmich.edu/registrar.
Page 5
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
Course Outline
I. Preliminaries
A. Review of exponential notation
B. Review of physical quantities
1. Basic quantities (time, mass, distance)
2. Derived quantities (velocity, acceleration, force, pressure, work, power, intensity)
Reading: Preliminaries Chapter (online)
II. Physical Acoustics
A. Vibration - frequency, amplitude, and phase
B. Sound propagation
C. Time- and frequency-domain representations of sound
D. Basic sound types
E. Fourier's theorem
F. Terminology
G. Filters
Reading: Physics of Sound Chapter (online)
Reading (optional): D&R Chapter 1 (Note: Do NOT read the material in D&R on the decibel
scale in D&R Chapter 2)
__________________________________________________
**** Exam 1 about here ****
__________________________________________________
III. Measurement of Sound
A. Representing signal magnitude
1. Instantaneous amplitude
2. Peak vs. RMS amplitude
3. The dreaded decibel scale (made easy)
B. Spectrograms
IV. Anatomy of the Ear
A. Overview
B. Gross anatomy of the temporal bone
C. Outer ear
D. Middle ear
E. Inner ear
Page 6
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
Reading: D&R Chapters 3, 4, 5
Reading: Auditory Physiology Chapter (online)
V. Physiology and Mechanics of the Inner Ear
A. Generation of a traveling wave
B. Excitation of hair cells
Reading: D&R Chapter 6
VI. Electrophysiology of the auditory system
A. Cochlear potentials
B. The auditory nerve
C. Tuning curves
Reading: D&R Chapter 7
__________________________________________________
**** Exam 2 about here ****
__________________________________________________
IX. The Central Auditory System
A. Anatomy of the auditory pathway
B. Evoked potentials
Reading: D&R Chapter 8
X. Auditory Perception
A. Physical vs. psychological (subjective) dimensions of sound
B. Subjective dimensions of sound
1. Pitch
2. Loudness
3. Timbre (sound quality)
C. Sound Localization
D. Bone Conduction
Reading: D&R Chapters 9-13
Page 7
James Hillenbrand
Spring term
2/8/2016
XI. Hearing Disorders
A. Thresholds and audiograms
B. Categories of hearing impairment
C. Classification of hearing disorders
1. Nature of the loss
2. Functional classification
3. Causes of hearing loss
D. Conductive hearing disorders
E. Sensorineural hearing disorders
F. Central auditory disorders
Reading: Review all material in the Deutsch & Richards text on hearing disorders. There is
no separate chapter on hearing disorders in D&R. Material related to hearing disorders
can be found at the ends of many of the chapters in the text. For example, the section on the
conductive system includes information about conductive hearing disorders.
Page 8