Implicit Knowledge in the Identification of Environmental Sounds: Causal Uncertainty and Stereotype.
Abstract
Two aspects of listeners' implicit knowledge about environmental sound were investigated: multiple casualty and stereotype. Several studies have demonstrated that the time required to identify an environmental is a function of the number of alternative causes, which defines causal uncertainty (CU). The procedure used to estimate causal uncertainty requires the collection and sorting of identification responses from a group of listeners. The number of unique responses is then used to calculate CU. Because the cognitive process implied by the role of CU assumes that listeners are informed about alternative causes, it was hypothesized that they might be able to directly estimate the number of alternative causes. In the first experiment, listeners were asked to estimate the number of alternative causes for a sound. These estimates correlated significantly with previous estimates of CU and sound identification times obtained from different listeners. In a second experiment listeners were given anchors for the number of possible causes of the sounds based upon the estimates increased. These estimates correlated significantly with experiment. Keywords: Psychoacoustics; Auditory perception.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1987
- Accession Number
- ADA214940
Entities
People
- James A. Ballas
Organizations
- George Mason University