Timbre Constancy
-the quality of the sound is constant
-you can hear the timbre of your friends voice in a quiet room an at a cocktail party
-like visual constancy, it can be explained in terms of a complicated analysis of the brain
Auditory Scene Analysis
-This is understood as the process by which the human auditory system organizes sound into perceptually meaningful elements
-In order to hear sounds, the basilar membrane in the inner ear vibrates and neurons respond to that.
-A spectrogram is an image-like picture of the sounds coming together.
Auditory Stream
-Our perceptual grouping of the parts of the neural spectrogram that go together
-A stream is a single happening that when combined leads to an auditory event
Belongingness
-We see it as being a property of something
-ex: a line is a part of something else
Exclusive Allocation
-a sensory element should not be used in more than one description at a time
-i.e. we see the vase, or the face, but not both at the same time
Old-Plus-New Heuristic
-Sound B is free from the influence of Sound A
Stream Segregation Is Stronger When:
-The frequency separation between high and low tones is greater
Stream Segregation is Higher At: -Higher speeds
Gestalt Grouping Explanation:
-Things must be grouped together to perceive them
-Separation in time and frequency -2 things: proximity and similarity
Gestalt Theories Argued That:
-there was a competition between the forces of attraction
-it is impossible to perceive sensory elements without forming an organized whole -this is all automatic
Korte’s Third Law PVision)
-as the speed increases, the distance between flashes must shrink if good motion is to be seen
Korte’s Auditory Third Law
-if you want to maintain the sense of melodic motion as the frequency separation between high and low tones increases, you must slow the sequence down
Gestalt Principle of Closure/Perceived Continuity
-the circle may not be complete but we see it as a complete circle perceptually
-completing forms with gaps in them
-the closure mechanism is a way of dealing with missing evidence
Masking PAuditory)
-This occurs when a loud sound covers up or drowns out a softer one
-Even if the softer sound is removed, it is still heard as continuing under the loud sound Pshows closure)
Sequential Integration PHorizontal grouping)
-when you put A and B together into a stream Pputting it into a sequence)
-forms a melodic component of music Pmelody)
Spectral Integration PVertical grouping)
-the fusing of B with C into a single sound Psimultaneous, all at once)
-acoustic inputs that occur at the same time Pchords and harmony)
Computer Modeling Approach
-the notion of a heuristic
-solves a problem to find a solution
Syntactic Theory
-how to describe the rules that allow the speaker to impose a meaning on the sentence by adding, subtracting or rearranging elements in the sentence
Noam Chomsky’s Deep Structure
-in order to understand the sentence, the listener parses the sentence and builds a deep structure for it
Physiological Explanation
-the streaming effect represents both the breakdown of a physiological mechanism and the accomplishment of scene analysis
Sound-emitting
-humans make use of this rather than sound-reflecting
Low-Frequency Sounds
-bend around obstructions
High Frequency Sounds
-bounce around obstructions
Echoes
-in audition, echoes are delayed copies of the sound and often mix with the original sound -in vision, echoes are useful in specifying the shapes of objects
Primitive Stream Segregation -unlearned constraints
Schema-Based Stream Segregation
-learned constraints
-a mental representation of some regularity in our experience
Principle of Psychophysical Complementarity
-states that the mental processes of animals have evolved to be complementary with the structure of the surrounding world
Demany’s Infant Sound Experiment
-The infants perceived the sounds as being the same, even when they were different.