Auditory Pattern Perception
Demonstrations (Direct Links)
Demonstration 11.1 A Common Song
Demonstration 11.2 Consonance and Dissonance
Demonstration 11.3 Shepard Tones
Demonstration 11.4 The Octave Illusion
Demonstration 11.5 Consonants
Demonstration 11.6 Backwards Speech
Demonstration 11.7 Phonemic Restoration
Demonstration 11.8 McGurk Effect
Before You Start
• Although a great deal of research has used simple sine waves as stimuli, the sounds you typically encounter in everyday life are complex sounds. Thus, humans have evolved to hear complex sounds and we're quite good at interpreting such sounds. What are the adaptive advantages to hearing complex sounds such as music and speech?
• Music is a common complex auditory stimulus. You probably listen to a fair amount of music every day. Even if you're not a musician, you probably understand a lot about music. Why might you enjoy listening to music? Why do prefer particular kinds of music? Why are some pieces of music able to elicit emotional responses?
• Imagine that you couldn't speak or hear speech. How would you communicate with other humans? Perhaps you're imagining a life of text messaging! Speech is certainly an important human ability. Have you given any thought to how you developed the ability to speak? (Check out Chapter 14!) When you listen to someone speak, do you hear a series of words? When you speak, do you utter a series of words? As you learn more about speech, you may be surprised to learn that you're hearing boundaries between words that aren't so readily apparent.
Perception of Complex Auditory Patterns
The Nature of Complex Sound Stimuli
Making Sense of Complex Sounds
The Musical Stimulus
• Link - Do you have perfect (absolute) pitch? You can find out at the University of California, San Francisco Perfect Pitch Site.
Music and the Brain
• Link - You can watch a lecture by Aniruddh Patel on Music and the Mind.
• Link - Daniel Levitin has written a very interesting book (This Is Your Brain on Music). You'll find his web site an interesting amalgam of music and research.
The Role of Cognition in Music Perception
Illusions in Music
The Speech Stimulus
• Link - Listen to samples of emotion in speech.
Theories of Speech Perception
Speech and the Brain
• Link - YouTube video of a person with Broca's aphasia
• Link - YouTube video of a person with Wernicke's aphasia
The Role of Cognition in Speech Perception
1. Contrast complex auditory stimuli with the simple auditory stimuli we often discussed in Chapters 9 and 10. Perception of complex auditory stimuli shares many similarities with perception of complex visual stimuli. Illustrate as many similarities between auditory and visual pattern perception as you can. Pay particular attention to cognitive factors. Why do you think these similarities might have emerged?
2. We discussed pitch perception in this chapter and in Chapter 10. Why is
pitch more complicated than a simple arrangement of notes from low to high?
Be certain to mention the concepts of the octave and tonality. Then discuss
how notes with similar tone chromas from different octaves are similar to
each other. How might you use pitch to contrast the physical stimulus and
the psychological stimulus?
3. Imagine yourself at a concert of your choice. Discuss how the material
in the music perception portion of the chapter might make you more aware
of perceptual qualities of the music. Be certain to mention pitch, tonality,
loudness, timbre, and tone combinations.
4. Speech perception seems so easy and effortless. Nonetheless, theories
of speech perception are complex. Why? Describe the distinctions among the
Special Mechanism and the General Mechanism accounts of speech perception.
In spite of the evidence against Special Mechanisms, why might one still
believe that speech is special?
5. Illusions play important roles in helping us to understand the operation
of perceptual systems. How might the musical and speech illusions (e.g.,
phonemic restoration) in this chapter help inform our understanding of the
auditory system? Can you make any links to visual illusions?
6. Integrate the information from the previous two chapters with information
from this chapter to describe what happens in the brain as you listen to
music and to speech. How might the complexity of brain activity argue against
areas of the brain being specialized for music or speech?
7. Imagine that you have just heard a reporter on television deliver a report.
As you watched the reporter, you heard one sentence distinctly except for
a part of one word. Use the information from this chapter to illustrate how
you would be able to understand the utterance in spite of incomplete auditory
information.
8. In earlier chapters, we often commented on the importance of context for
visual perception. In this chapter, you have seen a number of examples in
which context influences auditory perception. Use several examples from this
chapter to clarify the role of context in perception. Does the role of context
seem to differ when dealing with auditory stimuli?
9. Top-down (or conceptually driven) processing becomes especially important
in the perception of complex stimuli. Describe the operation of top-down
processes in the perception of complex auditory stimuli. How do bottom-up
(data-driven) processes function in the perception of complex auditory stimuli?
Which class of processes do you think is dominant in the perception of complex
stimuli?
10. After learning about visual perception, you’ve now completed three
chapters about auditory perception. Given what you know now, how would you
characterize the relationship between vision and audition? Make use of the
information in this chapter (e.g., the McGurk effect) to support your position.
Philomel RecordsDiana Deutsch (University of California San Diego) has produced these two CDs, which demonstrate a number of phenomena that Dr. Deutsch has researched extensively. On the Musical Illusions CD you'll find the octave illusion and the tritone paradox, both of which are discussed in the textbook. On the Phantom Words CD you'll find additional clever demonstrations, including phantom words and "music" emerging from repetitive speech. You'll also find useful information and auditory demonstrations on her web page.
• Subliminal Messages
John Vokey and Don Read have written an excellent article and produced an enlightening audio cassette illustrating backwards speech. If you've ever listened to a Beatles album backwards in an effort to hear hidden messages (or even if you haven't) you'll really enjoy this tape. Information on acquiring the tape is in the article:
Vokey, J. R. & Read, J. D. (1985). Subliminal messages: Between the Devil and the media. American Psychologist, 40, 1231-1239.And, of course, you can create your own examples of reverse speech/music using sound editing software (examples below). If you want to teach your students to be critical thinkers, you might want to make use of the ReverseSpeech site, wherein David John Oates makes a number of "humble" claims ("It has been called the discovery of the 7th sense. The research into this phenomenon has been described as being of 'Nobel calibre'.") :-) Unfortunately, the pseudoscience that characterizes the site appears to be seductive to some people.
• Sound Editing Software
You can create a number of interesting demonstrations with some relatively cheap and easy-to-use software. In the Mac world, Amadeus is a great choice. Martin Hairer develops the software, which you can obtain for $30 from his website Hairersoft.com. A cross-platform option is Audacity, which is free. You can download the software from the Audacity website.
Link - The UCLA Phonetics Lab Data site provides a number of sounds from different languages. Peter Ladefoged will surely be missed! Some additional demonstrations from the lab are to be found here. In addition, you can access a number of teaching aids.
Sensimetrics is a company that has developed a number of tools that can be used for teaching about speech (including a PC-based CD called Speech Production and Perception, a CD for both PCs and non-Intel Macs called Seeing and Hearing Speech, and a hearing loss simulator).
Link - Rob Hagiwara (University of Manitoba) produces a Monthly Mystery Spectrogram. Can you figure out the speech shown graphically?
Link - Musical Acoustics pages at University of New South Wales (John R. Smith) including a virtual flute.
Link - Music Cognition Resource Center (Ohio State) has a number of organized links, etc.
Link - The Music Cognition Lab (Queens University) also has helpful links regarding music.
Link - Music Research Site (University of Miami) maintains a wealth of useful information.
Link - Stefan Koelsch (Max Planck Institute) does interesting work on music perception. Not only does his page have access to files of his published work, but also he's placed appropriate sound files on the page.
Link - Vinod Menon (Stanford University) and his colleagues have published an interesting paper (in Neuron) about neuroimaging in the processing of music. Their web page also has a movie showing how the brain processing changes with changes in the music.
Link - Andrew Oxenham (University of Minnesota) heads the Auditory Perception and Cognition Group, providing a set of interesting sound samples related to publications from the group.
Link - Robert Zatorre (McGill University) maintains a very useful site with publications and some supporting sound files (look at Supplements).
Link - Isabelle Peretz (University of Montreal) also maintains a very useful site with publications and supporting sound files (e.g., emotion stimuli).
Link - The primary outlet for research on music perception is a journal called...Music Perception. :-) You might also want to check out the pages of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.
Link - The Exploratorium has a few demonstrations of hearing phenomena.
Link - Dale Purves (Duke), who has done a lot of very interesting work in visual perception, has turned his attention to sound and music. Hear some demonstrations at his site.
Link - If you'd like to help out with some research on music perception, please go to Josh McDermott's web study (while it's still available).
Link - Robert Dooling (University of Maryland) does interesting work on communication in (small) birds, so you'll learn a lot by visiting his pages.
Link - Isabelle Charrier has a page that supports her study of vocal communication in seals (pinnipeds). You'll find both pictures and recordings of the vocal communications.
Link - The Exploratorium has an online exhibit about Listening.
Link - Lori Holt (Carnegie Mellon) has provided a page of auditory demonstrations, including the McGurk effect.
Butler, D. (1992). The musician's guide to perception and cognition. New York: Schirmer. (This book is an excellent resource, but the accompanying CD is particularly useful for classroom demonstrations.)
Cook, P. R. (Ed.) (1999) Music, cognition, and computerized sound: An introduction to psychoacoustics. Cambridge, MA: MIT. (With CD of demos)
Diehl, R. L., Lotto, A. J. & Holt, L. L. (2004). Speech perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 149-179.
Levitin, D. J. (2006). This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession. New York: Dutton.
Patel, A. D. (2007). Music, language, and the brain. New York: Oxford.
Peretz, I. & Zatorre, R. J. (2005). Brain organization for music processing. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 89-114.
Radocy, R. E. & Boyle, J. D. (Eds.) (2003). Psychological foundations of musical behavior, 4th Ed.. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Sloboda, J. (2005). Exploring the musical mind. Oxford.
