Degree: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, 2005;

Research

The research that I have been engaged in with the Auditory Perception Laboratory at UWM involves the use of high order filtering of speech and noise. The research is actively exploring the ability to use noise to mitigate the impact of amplitude "rollover of intelligibility" for degraded speech signals. Such rollover of intelligibility can cause problems for users of hearing assistive devices: by the time the amplitude of the auditory signal is high enough for the hearing impaired to "hear" it, the rollover of intelligibility cause by the amplitude itself can impair the usefulness of the device.  Recent research in this lab has illustrated that the intelligibility of high amplitude filtered speech can be enhanced by the use of interpolated noise. This appears to be due to a reduction in the spread of activation that causes the rollover effect.

Courses taught:

Psych 101: Introduction to Psychology
Psych 325: Research Methods in Psychology
Psych 503: Perception
Psych 623: Perceptual Processes

Publications

Greenberg, A. S. & Lenz, P. W. (2023). Perception (2^nd rev. prelim. ed.). Cognella Publishing

Warren, R. M., Bashford Jr, J. A., & Lenz, P. W. (2018). Arrays of rectangular subcritical speech bands: Intelligibility improved by noise-vocoding and expanding to critical bandwidths. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143(4), EL305-EL310.

Bashford, J. A., Jr., Warren, R. M., & Lenz, P. W. (2017). Maintaining intelligibility at high intensities with arrays of subcritical width speech bands and interpolated noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 142(3), EL299-EL305.

Warren, R. M., Bashford, J. A., Jr., & Lenz, P. W. (2017). Critical bandwidth speech: Arrays of subcritical band speech maintain near-ceiling intelligibility at high amplitudes. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141(3), EL222-EL227.

Lenz, P. W. & Bashford, J. A. (2015). Arrays of subcritical width rectangular speech bands with interpolated noise maintain intelligibility at high intensities. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(3), 1781-1781.

Warren, R. M., Bashford, J. A., Jr., & Lenz, P. W. (2015). How broadband speech may avoid neural firing rate saturation at high intensities and maintain intelligibility. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137(4), EL340-EL346.

Warren, R. M., & Lenz, P. W. (2015). Maintaining speech intelligibility at 100 dB using arrays of subcritical width rectangular bands. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(3), 1781-1781.

Warren, R. M., Bashford, J. A., Jr., & Lenz, P. W. (2014). Arrays of subcritical width rectangular speech bands maintain intelligibility at high intensities. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 21. 060004.

Bashford, J. A., Jr., Warren, R. M., & Lenz, P. W. (2013). Maintaining intelligibility at high speech intensities: Evidence of lateral inhibition in the lower auditory pathway. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(1), EL119 – 25.

Warren, R. M., Bashford, J. A., Jr., & Lenz, P. W. (2011). An alternative to the computational Speech Intelligibility Index estimates: Direct measurement of rectangular passband intelligibilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37, 296 – 302.