Sound Research WIKINDX

Following Merleau-Ponty, Abram acknowledges the primacy of the body in fashioning a self by engaging with other selves and with space. Yes, perhaps there is something genetically dictated in our behaviours but, like the spider spinning a web, these genetic 'programs' must also interact with the present through its bodily sensing of the terrain, and its specific features and dimensions, in which the web must be spun. "[T]he genome could not explicitly have commanded the order of every flexion and extension of her various limbs as she weaves this web into its place. However complex are the inherited "programs," patterns, or predispositions, they must still be adapted to the immediate situation in which the spider finds itself. However determinate one's genetic inheritance, it must still, as it were, be woven into the present, an activity that necessarily involves both a receptivity to the specific shapes and textures of that present and a spontaneous creativity in adjusting oneself (and one's inheritance) to those contours. It is this open activity, this dynamic blend of receptivity and creativity by which every animate organism necessarily orients itself to the world (and orients the world around itself), that we speak of by the term "perception"."

An argument that [Hollywood] films are designed solely for audience accessibility -- if films are not accessible to the public, they don't sell and the producer/director don't work again -- "problems of accessibility are problems of perception." (p. 11)

Our ears are more attuned to breaks in continuity than eyes (ears do not blink) and, in film, sound glitches are more noticeable and less tolerated than visual glitches: "...sound is seventy percent of the illusion of reality in a motion picture."

Discussing confirmation of cross-modal perception, Anderson gives the example of the discomfort felt in watching a silent movie with no musical accompaniment. "The simple addition of musical accompaniment provides a second modality against which to check our impressions and provides confirmation on at least two levels. Musical changes played by the pianist in unison with narrative transitions offer confirmation of the transitions themselves, while the tone and emotion of the music offer confirmation of the event's significance."

"...it is reasonable to conclude that the principles of grouping that were discovered and named by the Gestalt psychologists exist in order to perform the role of scene analysis."

Suggests that humans do "not give absolute priority to the spatial cue" p.26 when separating sound in the audio scene because of the ability of sound to bend around corners, be attenuated by objects or to be reflected off objects. None of these affect the sound's fundamental frequency or add frequencies to the sound so it is reasonable to assume that frequency (as detected by the filtering effect of the pinnae) is a more reliable method of localisation.

Describes three methods that humans use to decompose complex sounds into perceptually recognisable units. The first two depend on experienced and learned sound schemas (i.e. memory) that are activated a) automatically (often the case when our name is spoken unexpectedly) or b) voluntarily as part of a voluntary attentive mode of listening (for example when we are listening out for flight announcements in a noisy airport. The third is used to distinguish audio components where there is no familiar schema to use. Bregman terms this primitive auditory scene analysis and it uses acoustic properties rather than familiar schemas.

"...all perceptual experience is necessarily the end product of a categorization process."

Discussing the accessibility of categories (how readily categorisation is performed): "...perceptual readiness or accessibility performs two functions: to minimize the surprise value of the environment by matching category accessibility to the probabilities of events in the world about one, and to maximize the attainment of sought-after objects and events."

A section dealing with expectancy. Bruner suggests that expectancy of encountering events or objects in any context "preactivates a related array of categories" (p.137) leading to a heightened state of perceptual readiness.

A point taken up later by Anderson that veridicality encompasses a process of matching and confirmation across modalities (Anderson 1996, p.82).

Prediction-based models that Clark espouses "learn to construct the sensory signal by combining probabilistic representations of hidden causes operating at many different spatial and temporal scales [...] they must match the incoming sensory signal by constructing the signal from combinations of hidden causes (latent variables). The so-called 'transparency' of perception emerges as a natural consequence of such a process when it is conditioned by an embodied agent's lifestyle-specific capacities to act and to choose. We seem to see dogs, cats, chasings, pursuits, captures [...] because these feature among the interesting, nested, structures of distal causes that matter for human choice and action."

perception "is a process of explaining away the sensory signal by finding the most likely set of interacting distal causes"

"the brain's job is to account for the sensory signal by finding a way to generate, in a kind of rolling present, that incoming signal for itself. To do this, the brain must find the structure in the signal. But the structure in the sensory signal is mostly determined by the structure in the world (making sure that's the case is pretty much the job description if you are a sensory transducer). So the best way to anticipate/match the incoming signal is to discover and deploy internal resources that amount to a kind of 'virtual reality generator' that models the distal elements and their typical modes of interaction (simplistically, if it generates 'car' and 'sudden braking' it might also generate 'smoke from tires'). An agent perceives when the virtual reality generator can use its resources to capture (match, cancel out) the structure of the incoming signal."

Clark presents another example of the two competing models of perception this time concerning speech recognition (quoting p.936 of Poeppel & Monahan):

"Representations constructed at earlier stages of processing feed immediately higher levels in a feedforward manner...this process proceeds incrementally until access to a ''lexical conceptual'' representation has been achieved. In speech recognition...this involves a conversion from acoustic features onto phonetic representations, phonetic representations onto phonological representations, and finally access of the lexical item based on its phonological structure.
[...]
(1) the extraction of (necessarily brief and coarse) cues in the input signal to elicit hypotheses, that while coarse, are sufficient to generate plausible guesses about classes of sounds (for example, plosives, fricatives, nasals, and approximants), and that permit subsequent refinement; (2) the actual synthesis of potential sequences consistent with the cues; and (3) a comparison operation between synthesized targets and the input signal delivered from the auditory analysis of the speech."

David Poeppel and Philip J. Monahan “Feedforward and feedback in speech perception: Revisiting analysis by synthesis”, Language and Cognitive Processes 26:7, (2011): 935-95.

Clark presents two alternate models of perception:

"What happens when, after a brief chat with a colleague, I re-enter my office and visually perceive the hot, steaming, red cup of coffee that I left waiting on my desk? One possibility is that my brain receives a swathe of visual signals (imagine, for simplicity, an array of activated pixels) that specify a number of elementary features such as lines, edges, and color patches. Those elementary features are then progressively accumulated and (where appropriate) bound together, yielding shapes and specifying relations. At some point, these complex shapes and relations activate bodies of stored knowledge, turning the flow of sensation into world-revealing perception: the seeing of coffee, steam, and cup, with the steaming bound to the coffee, the color red to the cup, and so on.

[...]

As I re-enter my office my brain already commands a complex set of coffee-involving expectations. Glancing at my desk sets off a chain of visual processing in which current bottom-up signals are met by a stream of downwards predictions concerning the anticipated states of various neuronal groups along the appropriate visual pathway. In essence, a multi-layer downwards cascade is attempting to "guess" the present states of all the key neuronal populations responding to the present state of the visual world. There ensues a rapid exchange (a dance between multiple top-down and bottom-up signals) in which incorrect guesses yield error signals which propagate forward, and are used to extract better guesses. When top-down guessing adequately accounts for the incoming signal, the visual scene is perceived. As this process unfolds, top-down processing is trying to generate the incoming sensory signal for itself. When and only when this succeeds, and a match is established, do we get to experience (veridically or otherwise) a meaningful visual scene."

Hint that the results of their experiment may "form the basis for intuitive mappings to artificial events ... The major benefit of using auditory icons may be to reacquaint humans with a phylogenetically familiar environment."

"ample evidence of the fact that the sense of time is of fundamental importance to humans' sense of self". Erlmann relates this to Freud's Zauderrhythmus (vacillating rhythm) that governs the "proper interaction of consciousness and unconsciousness" -- thus perception is subject to "a "periodic" motion that wards off or at least slows down the "haste" of excessive excitations." According to Freud, this "apparatus not only sustains the organism and enlarges the domain of the ego by allowing us to step back from the urge to respond to each and every stimulus, it also determines our concept of time. Our entire time consciousness is based on the breaks that occur in the interplay between consciousness and the unconscious."

"thinking and hearing do not so much place the subject in a fixed position vis-à-vis the world as they entangle it in ever-changing relationships of tonal resonance"

Summarizing some of von Helmholtz's work c.1856 (On the Sensations of Tone: a sound (Klang) comprises several partials (Ton) thus perception, which is accomplished without reflection, is the act of fusing the sensation of several partials into one sound. Perceptions are thus the means by which we are aware of external objects whilst sensations allow us to become conscious of ourselves. "[P]erception is not based on conscious awareness and knowledge of the external world, but on a largely unconscious act" (p.237).

cf Humphrey's (2000) reference to Thomas Reid's (1785) assertion that sensation presupposes a sentient being and no more but perception is an acknowledgement of something external to that being.

"One cannot subject sound to a persistent observation; rather one can only listen and then, maybe, listen again. Music is apprehended in chunks of time. Partly because sound is dynamic, Western intellectual traditions show a markeds preference for vision as the figure of knowledge. We articulate more effectively the fixed image than the dynamic sound."

"Though it is often the case that signal overwhelms noise, it is noise that binds the signal, that serves as a medium, a baseline, a plane of relief against which signal stands out."

Using his simplified algorithms for modelling and synthesis of sound (simplification by discarding parts of the algorithm that have no perceptible effect, is likened by Gaver to "cartoon sounds" analogous to visual cartoons which "capture some defining features while leaving out incidental ones."

Abram, D. (2017). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1997).
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 03/09/2026, 02:40
Discussing the participatory nature of perception through the analogy of a magician using sleight of hand on a coin: "he uses his sleights to enhance the animation of the object, generating ambiguous gaps and lacunae in the visible trajectory of the coin. The spectators' eyes, already drawn by the coin's fluid dance across the magician's fingers, spontaneously fill in those gaps with impossible events, and it is this spontaneous involvement of the spectators' own senses that enables the coin to vanish and reappear, or to pass through the magician's hand [...] The perceiving body does not calculate logical possibilities; it gregariously participates in the activity of the world, lending its imagination to things in order to see them more fully."
Following Merleau-Ponty, Abram acknowledges the primacy of the body in fashioning a self by engaging with other selves and with space. Yes, perhaps there is something genetically dictated in our behaviours but, like the spider spinning a web, these genetic 'programs' must also interact with the present through its bodily sensing of the terrain, and its specific features and dimensions, in which the web must be spun. "[T]he genome could not explicitly have commanded the order of every flexion and extension of her various limbs as she weaves this web into its place. However complex are the inherited "programs," patterns, or predispositions, they must still be adapted to the immediate situation in which the spider finds itself. However determinate one's genetic inheritance, it must still, as it were, be woven into the present, an activity that necessarily involves both a receptivity to the specific shapes and textures of that present and a spontaneous creativity in adjusting oneself (and one's inheritance) to those contours. It is this open activity, this dynamic blend of receptivity and creativity by which every animate organism necessarily orients itself to the world (and orients the world around itself), that we speak of by the term "perception"."
Anderson, J. D. (1996). The reality of illusion: An ecological approach to cognitive film theory. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 28/10/2016, 18:06
The ability to make the connection between image and sound is called synchrony: "If the auditory and visual events occur at the same time, the sound and image are perceived as one event."
An argument that [Hollywood] films are designed solely for audience accessibility -- if films are not accessible to the public, they don't sell and the producer/director don't work again -- "problems of accessibility are problems of perception." (p. 11)
Discussing veridicality (the central organising system of the visual system): "...an individual's perception of the world needed to be a very close approximation of that world. It had to be accurate enough to act upon because the consequences of error were severe."
Our ears are more attuned to breaks in continuity than eyes (ears do not blink) and, in film, sound glitches are more noticeable and less tolerated than visual glitches: "...sound is seventy percent of the illusion of reality in a motion picture."
"Perception is an information-gathering activity. And when it occurs in two or more sensory modes simultaneously, it is a process of information comparison, an active search for cross-modal confirmation."
Discussing confirmation of cross-modal perception, Anderson gives the example of the discomfort felt in watching a silent movie with no musical accompaniment. "The simple addition of musical accompaniment provides a second modality against which to check our impressions and provides confirmation on at least two levels. Musical changes played by the pianist in unison with narrative transitions offer confirmation of the transitions themselves, while the tone and emotion of the music offer confirmation of the event's significance."
"The power of the motion picture is that its separate streams of images and sounds can be constructed as to meet the criteria of the perceptual systems, thus eliciting confirmation of the unity and veridicality of filmic events."
Bech, S., & Zacharov, N. (2006). Perceptual audio evaluation: Theory, method and application. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 11/07/2014, 12:28
Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sound. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 21/08/2015, 13:51
Bregman, A. S., & Campbell, J. (1971). Primary auditory stream segregation and perception of order in rapid sequences of tones. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 89(2), 244–249.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 28/09/2005, 10:26
"The distinction between a [auditory] stream and a sensory channel is that a stream is an organizational entity and is not definable by any single physical property."
Bregman, A. S. (1993). Auditory scene analysis: Hearing in complex environments. In S. McAdams & E. Bigand (Eds.), Thinking in Sound: The Cognitive Psychology of Human Audition. (pp. 10–36). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 28/09/2005, 10:43
The correct perception of sound "is probably as long as the system is operating in the rich natural environment in which it evolved." Sound in isolation or in anechoic chambers may produce illusions.
"...it is reasonable to conclude that the principles of grouping that were discovered and named by the Gestalt psychologists exist in order to perform the role of scene analysis."
A long section in which several rules are supplied for primitive auditory scene analysis based on the detection of frequency, temporal and intensity regularity. 1. "Unrelated sounds seldom start or stop exactly at the same time." p.17 2. "Gradualness of change. a) A single sound tends to change its properties smoothly and slowly. b) A sequence of sounds from the same source tends to change its properties slowly." p.18 3. "When a body vibrates with a repetitive period, its vibrations give rise to an acoustic pattern in which the frequency components are multiples of a common fundamental." p.27 4. "Many changes that take place in an acoustic event will affect all the components of the resulting sound in the same way and at the same time." p.28
Suggests that humans do "not give absolute priority to the spatial cue" p.26 when separating sound in the audio scene because of the ability of sound to bend around corners, be attenuated by objects or to be reflected off objects. None of these affect the sound's fundamental frequency or add frequencies to the sound so it is reasonable to assume that frequency (as detected by the filtering effect of the pinnae) is a more reliable method of localisation.
Humans exploit acoustic regularity in order to analyse and synthesis the auditory scene into different perceptual units.
Describes three methods that humans use to decompose complex sounds into perceptually recognisable units. The first two depend on experienced and learned sound schemas (i.e. memory) that are activated a) automatically (often the case when our name is spoken unexpectedly) or b) voluntarily as part of a voluntary attentive mode of listening (for example when we are listening out for flight announcements in a noisy airport. The third is used to distinguish audio components where there is no familiar schema to use. Bregman terms this primitive auditory scene analysis and it uses acoustic properties rather than familiar schemas.
A useful anaology of a robot attempting to 'perceive' and separate multiple sound sources to illustrate the fact that there is more to the perception of sound than the theories supplied by physics.
Bregman, A. S., & Pinker, S. (1978). Auditory streaming and the building of timbre. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 31(1), 19–31.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 05/10/2005, 11:02
Brewer, B. Perception and its objects.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 22/08/2025, 10:42
Bruner, J. S. (1957). On perceptual readiness. Psychological Review, 64(2), 123–152.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 21/10/2005, 14:48
"Perception involves an act of categorization. Put in terms of the antecedent and subsequent conditions from which we make our inferences, we stimulate an organism with some appropriate input and he responds by referencing the input to some class of things or events."
"...all perceptual experience is necessarily the end product of a categorization process."
Bruner uses the term predictive veridicality: "By predictive veridicality I mean simply that perceptual categorization of an object or event permits one to "go beyond" the properties of the object or event perceived to a prediction of other properties of the object not yet tested. The more adequate the category systems constructed for coding environmental events in this way, the greater the predictive veridicality that results."
Discussing the accessibility of categories (how readily categorisation is performed): "...perceptual readiness or accessibility performs two functions: to minimize the surprise value of the environment by matching category accessibility to the probabilities of events in the world about one, and to maximize the attainment of sought-after objects and events."
"Where accessibility of categories reflects environmental probabilities, the organism is in the position of requiring less stimulus input, less redundancy of cues for the appropriate categorization of objects."
A section dealing with expectancy. Bruner suggests that expectancy of encountering events or objects in any context "preactivates a related array of categories" (p.137) leading to a heightened state of perceptual readiness.
"The ability to use minimal cues quickly in categorization of the environment is what gives the organism its lead time in adjusting to events. Pause and close inspection inevitably cut down on this precious interval for adjustment."
A point taken up later by Anderson that veridicality encompasses a process of matching and confirmation across modalities (Anderson 1996, p.82).
While discussing an organism's ability to distinguish sensations between different modalities (e.g. vision and hearing), Bruner suggests that this ability and the modalities may not be so disjunct as first thought -- cf synesthaesia.
Clark, A. (2013). Expecting the world: Perception, prediction, and the origins of human knowledge. Journal of Philosophy, CX(9), 469–496.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 26/07/2018, 10:36
Perception is "an active process involving the (sub-personal) prediction of our own evolving neural states."
Prediction-based models that Clark espouses "learn to construct the sensory signal by combining probabilistic representations of hidden causes operating at many different spatial and temporal scales [...] they must match the incoming sensory signal by constructing the signal from combinations of hidden causes (latent variables). The so-called 'transparency' of perception emerges as a natural consequence of such a process when it is conditioned by an embodied agent's lifestyle-specific capacities to act and to choose. We seem to see dogs, cats, chasings, pursuits, captures [...] because these feature among the interesting, nested, structures of distal causes that matter for human choice and action."
Arguing that the model he presents does not support the view of the reality of the world being created within us (i.e. indirect perception), Clark states that: "The internal representations at issue function within us, and are not encountered by us. Instead, they make it possible for us to encounter the world. Moreover, they enable us to do so under the ecologically common conditions of noise, uncertainty, and ambiguity."
perception "is a process of explaining away the sensory signal by finding the most likely set of interacting distal causes"
The top-down, predictive model "puts together the most likely set of causes whose interaction would yield (hence explain) the present input."
"the brain's job is to account for the sensory signal by finding a way to generate, in a kind of rolling present, that incoming signal for itself. To do this, the brain must find the structure in the signal. But the structure in the sensory signal is mostly determined by the structure in the world (making sure that's the case is pretty much the job description if you are a sensory transducer). So the best way to anticipate/match the incoming signal is to discover and deploy internal resources that amount to a kind of 'virtual reality generator' that models the distal elements and their typical modes of interaction (simplistically, if it generates 'car' and 'sudden braking' it might also generate 'smoke from tires'). An agent perceives when the virtual reality generator can use its resources to capture (match, cancel out) the structure of the incoming signal."
"Perceptual content, as delivered by such a process of active self-prediction, is inherently organized and outward-looking [...] it reveals ‒ and cannot belp but reveal ‒ a structured [...] external world ... the world thus revealed is inherently meaningful ... It is an external arena populated not by proximal stimulations but by distal, causally interacting items and forces whose joint action best explains the current suite of sensory stimulation."
Clark presents another example of the two competing models of perception this time concerning speech recognition (quoting p.936 of Poeppel & Monahan): "Representations constructed at earlier stages of processing feed immediately higher levels in a feedforward manner...this process proceeds incrementally until access to a ''lexical conceptual'' representation has been achieved. In speech recognition...this involves a conversion from acoustic features onto phonetic representations, phonetic representations onto phonological representations, and finally access of the lexical item based on its phonological structure. [...] (1) the extraction of (necessarily brief and coarse) cues in the input signal to elicit hypotheses, that while coarse, are sufficient to generate plausible guesses about classes of sounds (for example, plosives, fricatives, nasals, and approximants), and that permit subsequent refinement; (2) the actual synthesis of potential sequences consistent with the cues; and (3) a comparison operation between synthesized targets and the input signal delivered from the auditory analysis of the speech." David Poeppel and Philip J. Monahan “Feedforward and feedback in speech perception: Revisiting analysis by synthesis”, Language and Cognitive Processes 26:7, (2011): 935-95.
"Perception [...] is the successful prediction of the current sensory signal using stored knowledge about the world. [The model] explains why perception, although carried out by the brain, cannot help but reach out to a distal world; it shows why that 'reaching out' reveals a world that is already structured"
Clark presents two alternate models of perception: "What happens when, after a brief chat with a colleague, I re-enter my office and visually perceive the hot, steaming, red cup of coffee that I left waiting on my desk? One possibility is that my brain receives a swathe of visual signals (imagine, for simplicity, an array of activated pixels) that specify a number of elementary features such as lines, edges, and color patches. Those elementary features are then progressively accumulated and (where appropriate) bound together, yielding shapes and specifying relations. At some point, these complex shapes and relations activate bodies of stored knowledge, turning the flow of sensation into world-revealing perception: the seeing of coffee, steam, and cup, with the steaming bound to the coffee, the color red to the cup, and so on. [...] As I re-enter my office my brain already commands a complex set of coffee-involving expectations. Glancing at my desk sets off a chain of visual processing in which current bottom-up signals are met by a stream of downwards predictions concerning the anticipated states of various neuronal groups along the appropriate visual pathway. In essence, a multi-layer downwards cascade is attempting to "guess" the present states of all the key neuronal populations responding to the present state of the visual world. There ensues a rapid exchange (a dance between multiple top-down and bottom-up signals) in which incorrect guesses yield error signals which propagate forward, and are used to extract better guesses. When top-down guessing adequately accounts for the incoming signal, the visual scene is perceived. As this process unfolds, top-down processing is trying to generate the incoming sensory signal for itself. When and only when this succeeds, and a match is established, do we get to experience (veridically or otherwise) a meaningful visual scene."
"Perception [...] is a matter of the brain using stored knowledge to predict, in a progressively more refined manner, the patterns of multi-layer neuronal response elicited by the current sensory stimulation."
Coward, S. W., & Stevens, C. J. (2004). Extracting meaning from sound: Nomic mappings, everyday listening, and perceiving object size from frequency. The Psychological Record, 54(3), 349–364.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 24/02/2006, 11:40
Discussing the results of the experiment: "nomic mappings were recognized more readily than symbolic mappings, but the advantage was restricted to the initial phase of the everyday listening group ... the difference in recognition of nomic and symbolic mappings was evident only during the first block of the everyday listening condition. This finding endorses the notion that mapping structures are more readily available in the nomic condition."
Hint that the results of their experiment may "form the basis for intuitive mappings to artificial events ... The major benefit of using auditory icons may be to reacquaint humans with a phylogenetically familiar environment."
Czyzewski, A., Rostek, B., Odya, P., & Zielinski, S. (2001). Determining influence of visual cues on the perception of surround sound using soft computing. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 2005, 545–552.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 12/10/2005, 11:38
"In most cases the video "attracts' the attention of the listener and, as a consequence, he or she localizes the sound closer to the screen center." This effect is called the "audio-visual proximity effect."
Erlmann, V. (2000). Reason and resonance: A history of modern aurality. New York: Zone Books.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 15/02/2024, 07:01
Adapting Foucault's author function, "one might say that the listener is not simply the recipient of an indefinite number of significations that fill his or her hearing, nor does he or she come after the work. Rather, the listener is a function that fixes these meanings with the goal of circumscribing and prescribing the auditory ways in which individuals acknowledge themselves as subjects."
"ample evidence of the fact that the sense of time is of fundamental importance to humans' sense of self". Erlmann relates this to Freud's Zauderrhythmus (vacillating rhythm) that governs the "proper interaction of consciousness and unconsciousness" -- thus perception is subject to "a "periodic" motion that wards off or at least slows down the "haste" of excessive excitations." According to Freud, this "apparatus not only sustains the organism and enlarges the domain of the ego by allowing us to step back from the urge to respond to each and every stimulus, it also determines our concept of time. Our entire time consciousness is based on the breaks that occur in the interplay between consciousness and the unconscious."
Summarizing from Ernst Mach's (1838 - 1916) unpublished diaries, "physics, physiology, and psychology are part of a single field of knowledge in which "reality" is but a conglomeration of "sensational elements".
"thinking and hearing do not so much place the subject in a fixed position vis-à-vis the world as they entangle it in ever-changing relationships of tonal resonance"
Re Helmholtz's assertion that perception is unconscious, he suggests that conscious analysis of the Klang into Ton constituents would be disturbing. Thus, according to Helmholtz, as Erlmann puts it: "Hearing is repression." (p.257)
Summarizing some of von Helmholtz's work c.1856 (On the Sensations of Tone: a sound (Klang) comprises several partials (Ton) thus perception, which is accomplished without reflection, is the act of fusing the sensation of several partials into one sound. Perceptions are thus the means by which we are aware of external objects whilst sensations allow us to become conscious of ourselves. "[P]erception is not based on conscious awareness and knowledge of the external world, but on a largely unconscious act" (p.237). cf Humphrey's (2000) reference to Thomas Reid's (1785) assertion that sensation presupposes a sentient being and no more but perception is an acknowledgement of something external to that being.
Plato and the atomists thought that sound was a stream of air particles or even "special atoms" issuing from the source.
Evans, G. (1985). Collected papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 10/01/2024, 05:50
"The connection between space and objectivity lies so deep in our conceptual scheme that many philosophers pass from 'objective' to 'outer' without even noticing the question they beg. The subjective being regarded as what is 'in the mind', the objective becomes what is 'without the mind, and then it is easy to say with Hobbes that if we have a conception of a thing without the mind, we have a conception of space."
Evens, A. (2005). Sound ideas: Music, machines, and experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 01/03/2006, 12:02
"The reproduction of sound is not a matter of physics but of affect and percept."
"One cannot subject sound to a persistent observation; rather one can only listen and then, maybe, listen again. Music is apprehended in chunks of time. Partly because sound is dynamic, Western intellectual traditions show a markeds preference for vision as the figure of knowledge. We articulate more effectively the fixed image than the dynamic sound."
"...noise can be any difference between an input signal; or it can be a background level of sonic energy in a room or in a machine; or it can be any unwanted, annoying or unexpected sound; or it can be the constant vibration of the air at a given point in space; or it can refer to any sound whatsoever."
"Though it is often the case that signal overwhelms noise, it is noise that binds the signal, that serves as a medium, a baseline, a plane of relief against which signal stands out."
Finney, E. M., Clementz, B. A., Hickok, G., & Dobkins, K. R. (2003). Visual stimuli activate auditory cortex in deaf subjects: Evidence from MEG. NeuroReport, 14(2), 1425–1427.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 15/06/2014, 09:49
Folmann, T. B. Auditory perception in games. Retrieved August 8, 2005, from http://www.gamesconfere ... viewabstract.php?id=361
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 20/10/2006, 08:51
Suggests a three-point model of auditory perception in games based upon: Emotional auditory perception in games Physical auditory perception in games Socio-cultural auditory perception in games
Gallese, V. (2016). The multimodal nature of visual perception: Facts and speculations. Gestalt Theory, 38(2/3), 127–140.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 29/09/2020, 10:35
Garner, T. A. (2024). The fundamental frequency: Extending sound perception theory to extended-reality collaborative environments. Computers & Education: X Reality, 5, 100080.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 09/09/2024, 07:14
Gaver, W. W. (1993). How do we hear in the world? Explorations in ecological acoustics. Ecological Psychology, 5(4), 285–313.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 25/04/2013, 16:39
"...material per se does not exist as for mechanical physics, but instead is separated into many other dimensions such as density, elasticity, and homegeneity. Nonetheless, people do seem to hear the material of a struck object, rather than these other properties[cite]185[/cite]."
Using his simplified algorithms for modelling and synthesis of sound (simplification by discarding parts of the algorithm that have no perceptible effect, is likened by Gaver to "cartoon sounds" analogous to visual cartoons which "capture some defining features while leaving out incidental ones."
Suggests that it is a mistake that acousticians and psychologists make when they assume that hearing a sound as an event requires higher and independent thought processes (because this requires memory and experience) because the sound (these people assume) does not carry such information itself.

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