Mental Representation of Auditory Sources
Abstract
The human auditory system possesses a remarkable ability to differentiate acoustic signals by the vibrational characteristics of their underlying sound sources. Understanding how listeners can detect, discriminate, classify, and remember acoustic source properties formed this project's overall goal. Using methods of signal detection, preliminary studies determined how listeners' sensitivity to auditory signals depends on whether attention is first directed to their acoustic features. Additional studies used perceptual mapping, new spectral measures, and novel data collection techniques to determine the acoustic cues listeners use to judge auditory perceptual similarity. A fundamental problem in auditory perception is to understand how listeners can perceive a sound source to be constant across wide variations in the sounds that the source can produce. Studies using simple and complex resonators demonstrated that listeners can represent the invariant properties of sound sources despite considerable variability in their excitation characteristics. Our ability to recognize previously heard sounds indicates that we encode features of acoustic sources in memory. Additional experiments used recognition and recall tasks, as well as measures of auditory "realism," to determine what cues persist in working and long-term memory. In sum, our research has shed important initial light on the human representation of auditory source properties.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA419095
Entities
People
- Gary Scavone
- James Beauchamp
- Stephen Lakatos
Organizations
- Washington State University Vancouver