What in the world do we hear?

Inaugural lecture by Brian Roberts, Professor of Auditory Perception at Aston University

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Hearing is the process by which we perceive objects and events in the world from the sounds that they produce. However, it is fairly uncommon in everyday life for us to hear a single source of sound in the absence of other sounds. For example, when we listen to the speech of a particular person during a conversation, their speech is often accompanied by the speech of other people and a host of background sounds. Indeed, these other sounds may temporarily mask the particular sound source to which we are paying attention. Therefore, our auditory system is often faced with the challenge of grouping together those sound elements that come from one source, separating them from those arising from other sources, and reconstructing missing information about the source we are trying to attend. Without a solution to this "auditory scene analysis" problem, our perceptions of speech, music, and other sounds would not correspond to the events that produced them. Indeed, listeners with hearing impairment often find dealing with noisy environments especially difficult, such as when trying to follow a conversation in a crowded room. This lecture will consider what we know about the nature of the scene analysis problem, and what perceptual research can tell us about how our auditory system is generally able to overcome the challenges arising from everyday listening conditions.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• aston
• university
• auditory
• perception
• scene
• analysis

[GeorgiosMICHALAKIS]

Quite informative and very educational, indeed.

Is there any more available?

[firebreathone2]

A lecture about auditory phonetics and auditory semantics