The analysis of pure word deafness (PWD) suggests that speech perception, construed as the integration of acoustic information to yield representations that enter into the linguistic computational system, (i) is separable in a modular sense from other aspects of auditory cognition and (ii) is mediated by the posterior superior temporal cortex in both hemispheres. PWD data are consistent with neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence in a manner that suggests that the speech code is analyzed bilaterally. The typical lateralization associated with (...) language processing is a property of the computational system that acts beyond the analysis of the input signal. The hypothesis of the bilateral mediation of the speech code does not imply that both sides execute the same computation. It is proposed that the speech signal is asymmetrically analyzed in the time domain, with left‐hemisphere mechanisms preferentially extracting information over shorter (25–50 ms) temporal integration windows and right mechanisms over longer (150–250 ms) windows. (shrink)

Visual Agnosia is a comprehensive and up-to-date review of disorders of higher vision that relates these disorders to current conceptions of higher vision from cognitive science, illuminating both the neuropsychological disorders and the nature of normal visual object recognition.Brain damage can lead to selective problems with visual perception, including visual agnosia the inability to recognize objects even though elementary visual functions remain unimpaired. Such disorders are relatively rare, yet they provide a window onto how the normal brain might (...) accomplish the complex task of vision. Visual Agnosia reviews a century of case studies of higher-level visual deficits following brain damage, places them in the general context of current neuroscience, and draws relevant conclusions about the organization of normal visual processing. It is unique in drawing on research in cognitive psychology, computational vision, visual neurophysiology, and neuropsychology to interpret the agnosias and draw inferences from them about visual object recognition.Following a historical account of agnosia research, Visual Agnosia offers a taxonomy of a wide range of agnosia syndromes, describing and interpreting the syndromes in terms of the latest theoretical models of visual processing and ultimately bringing them to bear as evidence on a variety of questions in the study of higher vision.Martha J. Farah is Associate Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Visual Agnosia is included in the Issues in Biology of Language and Cognition series, edited by John Marshall. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that there is a visual field, but the analogous notion of an auditory field is rejected by many philosophers on the grounds that the metaphysics or phenomenology of audition lack the necessary spatial or phenomenological structure. In this paper, I argue that many of the common objections to the existence of an auditory field are misguided and that, contrary to a tradition of philosophical scepticism about the spatiality of auditory experience, it is as (...) richly spatial as visual experience—and in some ways even more so. By carefully considering the spatiality and boundedness of audition, along with how sounds or their sources are experienced as occurring within the surrounding acoustic environment, we can gain a better understanding of (i) our auditory experience of space and (ii) the conditions for the existence of spatial sensory fields in general in a way that does not privilege vision over the other senses. (shrink)

Auditory stimulation training (AST) has been proposed as a potential treatment for chil-dren with specific language impairments (SLI). The current study was designed to test this as-sumption by using an AST with technically modulated musical material (ASTM) in a random-ized control group design. A total of 101 preschool children (62 male, 39 females; mean age = 4.52 years, SD = 0.62) with deficits in speech comprehension and poor working memory ca-pacity were randomly allocated into one of two treatment groups (...) or a control group. Children in the ASTM group (n = 40) received three 30-minute sessions per week over 12 weeks, whereas children in the comparison group received pedagogical activities during these intervals (n = 24). Children in the control group (n = 37) received no treatment. Working memory, phoneme dis-crimination and speech perception skills were tested prior to (baseline) and after treatment. Chil-dren in the ASTM group showed significantly greater working memory capacity, speech per-ception, and phoneme discrimination skills after treatment, whereas children in the other groups did not show such improvement. Taken together, these results suggest that ASTM can enhance auditory cognitive performance in children with SLI. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is, firstly, to identify the areas of conceptual confusion about the notion of auditory object that could benefit from a cooperation between philosophy and psychology of perception. Secondly, I try to clarify in what sense there may be individual entities that exist only in time focusing on auditory objects, and to establish what kind of relationship links the existence of such purely temporal entities with the existence of spatiotemporal entities such as bodies or (...) physical objects. Finally, a new definition of auditory object, conceived as a partially mind-dependent object, or Meinongian higher-order object based on inferiora, is discussed. (shrink)

In the haptic domain, a double dissociation can be proposed on the basis of neurological deficits between tactile information for action, represented by tactile apraxia, and tactile information for perception, represented by tactile agnosia. We suggest that this dissociation comes from different networks, both involving the anterior intraparietal area of the posterior parietal cortex.

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences (“hearing voices”) and auditory verbal agency (inner speech, and specifically “talking to (imaginary) voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences (VE) and auditory verbal agencies (VA), displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid (...) eye movement (REM) sleep, non‐REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep‐onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic‐pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

Fractal structure is a ubiquitous property found in nature and biology, and has been observed in processes at different levels of organization, including rhythmic behavior and musical structure. A temporal process is characterized as fractal when serial long-term correlations and statistical self-similarity (scaling) are present. Previous studies of sensorimotor synchronization using isochronous (non-fractal) stimuli show that participants' errors exhibit persistent structure (positive long-term correlations), while their inter-tap intervals (ITIs) exhibit anti-persistent structure (negative long-term correlations). Auditory-motor synchronization has not been (...) investigated with anti-persistent stimuli. In the current study, we systematically investigated whether the fractal structure of auditory rhythms was reflected in the responses of participants who were asked to coordinate their taps with each event. We asked musicians and non-musicians to tap with 12 different rhythms that ranged from anti-persistent to persistent. The scaling exponents of the ITIs were strongly correlated with the scaling exponents of the stimuli, showing that the long-term structure of the participants' taps scaled with the long-term structure of the stimuli. Surprisingly, the performance of the musicians was not significantly better than that of the non-musicians. Our results imply that humans are able to readily adapt (rather than simply react) to the overall statistical structure of temporally fluctuating stimuli, regardless of musical skill. (shrink)

Attention is often conceived as a gateway to consciousness . Although endogenous spatial attention may be independent of conscious perception , exogenous spatial orienting seems instead to be an important modulator of CP . Here, we investigate the role of auditory alerting in CP in normal observers. We used a behavioral task in which phasic alerting tones were presented either at unpredictable or at predictable time intervals prior to the occurrence of a near-threshold visual target. We find, for the (...) first time in neurologically intact observers, that phasic alertness increases CP, both objectively and subjectively. This result is consistent with evidence showing that phasic alerting can ameliorate the spatial bias exhibited by visual neglect patients . The alerting network may increase the activity of fronto-parietal networks involved in top-down amplification required to bring a stimulus into consciousness. (shrink)

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agency voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agencies, displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement sleep, non-REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was (...) controlled with the nightcap sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep-onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic-pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

Two priming experiments demonstrated exogenous attentional persistence to the fundamental auditory dimensions of frequency (Experiment 1) and time (Experiment 2). In a divided-attention task, participants responded to an independent dimension, the identification of three-tone sequence patterns, for both prime and probe stimuli. The stimuli were specifically designed to parallel the local–global hierarchical letter stimuli of [Navon D. (1977). Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 353–383] and the task was designed to parallel (...) subsequent work in visual attention using Navon stimuli [Robertson, L. C. (1996). Attentional persistence for features of hierarchical patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 227–249; Ward, L. M. (1982). Determinants of attention to local and global features of visual forms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8, 562–581]. The results are discussed in terms of previous work in auditory attention and previous approaches to auditory local–global processing. (shrink)

Though dividing one’s attention between two input streams typically impairs performance, detecting a behaviorally relevant stimulus can sometimes enhance the encoding of unrelated information presented at the same time. Previous research has shown that selection of this kind boosts visual cortical activity and memory for concurrent items. An important unanswered question is whether such effects are reflected in processing quality and functional connectivity in visual regions and in the hippocampus. In this fMRI study, participants were asked to memorize a stream (...) of naturalistic images and press a button only when they heard a predefined target tone. Images could be presented with a target tone, with a distractor tone, or without a tone. Auditory target detection increased activity throughout the ventral visual cortex but lowered it in the hippocampus. Enhancements in functional connectivity between the ventral visual cortex and the hippocampus were also observed following auditory targets. Multi-voxel pattern classification of image category was more accurate on target tone trials than on distractor and no tone trials in the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus. This effect was stronger in visual cortical clusters whose activity was more correlated with the hippocampus on target tone than on distractor tone trials. In agreement with accounts suggesting that subcortical noradrenergic influences play a role in the attentional boost effect, auditory target detection also caused an increase in locus coeruleus activity and phasic pupil responses. These findings outline a network of cortical and subcortical regions that are involved in the selection and processing of information presented at behaviorally relevant moments. (shrink)

This article discusses “auditory” arguments: arguments in which non-verbal sounds play a central role. It provides examples and explores the use of sounds in argument and argumentation. It argues that auditory arguments are not reducible to verbal arguments but have a similar structure and can be evaluated by extending standard informal logic accounts of good argument. I conclude that an understanding of auditory elements of argument can usefully expand the scope of informal logic and argumentation theory.

While much has been written about whether visual perception is cognitively penetrable, the analogous question with respect to auditory perception has received very little attention. Here we argue that instances of top-down modulation of auditory processing, although extensive, do not constitute cases of cognitive penetration of auditory perception since the changes in the phenomenology of auditory perception caused by top-down influences cannot plausibly be attributed to the listeners’ discursive thoughts.

According to the hierarchical model of sensory information processing, sensory inputs are transmitted to cortical areas, which are crucial for complex auditory and speech processing, only after being processed in subcortical areas (Hickok and Poeppel, 2007; Rauschecker and Scott, 2009). However, studies using electroencephalography (EEG) indicate that distinguishing simultaneous auditory inputs involves a widely distributed neural network, including the medial temporal lobe, which is essential for declarative memory, and posterior association cortices (Alain et al., 2001; Squire et al., (...) 2004). More recent studies have even demonstrated plasticity of auditory signals as low as the brainstem (Suga, 2008). Collectively, studies suggest that the functional architecture of perceptual processing involves primarily top-down modulation (Suga et al., 2002; Gilbert and Li, 2013; Chandrasekaran et al., 2014). Top-down influences exerted throughout the auditory systems (Lotto and Holt, 2011) include: memory (Goldinger, 1998)1, attention (Choi et al., 2014), which has been found to modulate auditory encoding in the cochlea, a subcortical area (Maison et al., 2001), (prior) knowledge of syntax or words (Ganong, 1980; Warren, 1984)2, and experience-based expectations pertaining to the speaker's accent (Deutsch, 1996; Deutsch et al., 2004; Irino and Patterson, 2006), gender (Johnson et al., 1999), and vocal folds or tract (Irino and Patterson, 2002; Patterson and Johnsrude, 2008) . (shrink)

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are a highly complex and rich phenomena, and this has a number of important clinical, theoretical and methodological implications. However, until recently, this fact has not always been incorporated into the experimental designs and theoretical paradigms used by researchers within the cognitive sciences. In this paper, we will briefly outline two recent examples of phenomenologically informed approaches to the study of AVHs taken from a cognitive science perspective. In the first example, based on Larøi and (...) Woodward (Harv Rev Psychiatry 15:109–117, 2007 ), it is argued that reality monitoring studies examining the cognitive underpinnings of hallucinations have not reflected the phenomenological complexity of AVHs in their experimental designs and theoretical framework. The second example, based on Jones (Schizophr Bull, in press, 2010 ), involves a critical examination of the phenomenology of AVHs in the context of two other prominent cognitive models: inner speech and intrusions from memory. It will be shown that, for both examples, the integration of a phenomenological analysis provides important improvements both on a methodological, theoretical and clinical level. This will be followed by insights and critiques from philosophy and clinical psychiatry—both of which offer a phenomenological alternative to the empiricist–rationalist conceptualisation of AVHs inherent to the cognitive sciences approach. Finally, the paper will conclude with ideas as to how the cognitive sciences may integrate these latter perspectives into their methodological and theoretical programmes. (shrink)

Auditory scene analysis is critical for complex auditory processing. We study auditory segregation from the neural network perspective, and develop a framework for primitive auditory scene analysis. The architecture is a laterally coupled two‐dimensional network of relaxation oscillators with a global inhibitor. One dimension represents time and another one represents frequency. We show that this architecture, plus systematic delay lines, can in real time group auditory features into a stream by phase synchrony and segregate different (...) streams by desynchronization. The network demonstrates a set of psychological phenomena regarding primitive auditory scene analysis, including dependency on frequency proximity and the rate of presentation, sequential capturing, and competition among different perceptual organizations. We offer a neurocomputational theory—shifting synchronization theory—for explaining how auditory segregation might be achieved in the brain, and the psychological phenomenon of stream segregation. Possible extensions of the model are discussed. (shrink)

Multisensory integration allows us to link sensory cues from multiple sources and plays a crucial role in speech development. However, it is not clear whether humans have an innate ability or whether repeated sensory input while the brain is maturing leads to efficient integration of sensory information in speech. We investigated the integration of auditory and somatosensory information in speech processing in a bimodal perceptual task in 15 young adults (age 19 to 30) and 14 children (age 5 to (...) 6). The participants were asked to identify if the perceived target was the sound /e/ or /ø/. Half of the stimuli were presented under a unimodal condition with only auditory input. The other stimuli were presented under a bimodal condition with both auditory input and somatosensory input consisting of facial skin stretches provided by a robotic device, which mimics the articulation of the vowel /e/. The results indicate that the effect of somatosensory information on sound categorization was larger in adults than in children. This suggests that integration of auditory and somatosensory information evolves throughout the course of development. (shrink)

It might be suggested that in auditory experience elements of the material world are not apparent to us in the way they are in vision and touch, and that this constitutes a shortcoming in the kind of cognitive contact with the world provided by auditory perception. I develop this suggestion, and then set out a way of thinking about the appearances of sound‐producing events that might provide a response.1Thanks to James Stazicker for very helpful comments and suggestions.

Three experiments examined repetition priming for meaningful environmental sounds in a sound stem identification paradigm using brief sound cues. Prior encoding of target sounds together with their associated names facilitated subsequent identification of sound stems relative to nonstudied controls. In contrast, prior exposure to names alone in the absence of the environmental sounds did not prime subsequent sound stem identification performance at all . Explicit and implicit memory were dissociated such that sound stem cued recall was higher following semantic than (...) nonsemantic encoding, whereas sound priming was insensitive to manipulations of depth encoding . These results extend the findings of long-term repetition priming into the auditory nonverbal domain and suggest that priming for environmental sounds is mediated primarily by perceptual processes. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of auditory object processing for producing and comprehending human language, the relative lack of development of this capability in nonhuman primates, and the consequent need for hominid neurobiological evolution to enhance this capability in making the transition from protosign to protospeech to language.

Recent work on the mechanisms underlying auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) has been heavily informed by self-monitoring accounts that postulate defects in an internal monitoring mechanism as the basis of AVH. A more neglected alternative is an account focusing on defects in auditory processing, namely a spontaneous activation account of auditory activity underlying AVH. Science is often aided by putting theories in competition. Accordingly, a discussion that systematically contrasts the two models of AVH can generate sharper questions that (...) will lead to new avenues of investigation. In this paper, we provide such a theoretical discussion of the two models, drawing strong contrasts between them. We identify a set of challenges for the self-monitoring account and argue that the spontaneous activation account has much in favor of it and should be the default account. Our theoretical overview leads to new questions and issues regarding the explanation of AVH as a subjective phenomenon and its neural basis. Accordingly, we suggest a set of experimental strategies to dissect the underlying mechanisms of AVH in light of the two competing models. (shrink)

The phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations occurring in hypnagogic and hypnopompic states has received little attention. In a sample of healthy participants, 108 participants reported H&H AVHs and answered subsequent questions on their phenomenology. AVHs in the H&H state were found to be more likely to only feature the occasional clear word than to be clear, to be more likely to be one-off voices than to be recurrent voices, to be more likely to be voices of people known to (...) the individual than unknown persons, to be more likely to talk directly to the person rather than not, and to only rarely give commands, ask questions, or to result in an interactive conversation. Their phenomenology was similar to normative AVHs in wakefulness in that the voice-hearer was usually the target of the voice, and the voice was more likely to be of a recognized person. However, H&H AVHs differed from AVHs in wakefulness in that commands and questions were rare, and there was typically no dialogical engagement with the voice. We conclude by proposing that two distinct types of H&H AVHs may exist, based on an analysis of the phenomenology of the experience, and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

It might be suggested that in auditory experience elements of the material world are not apparent to us in the way they are in vision and touch, and that this constitutes a shortcoming in the kind of cognitive contact with the world provided by auditory perception. I develop this suggestion, and then set out a way of thinking about the appearances of sound-producing events that might provide a response.

The auditory system is able to recognize auditory objects and is thought to form predictive models of them even though the acoustic information arriving at our ears is often imperfect, intermixed, or distorted. We investigated implicit regularity extraction for acoustically intact versus disrupted six-tone sound patterns via event-related potentials. In an exact-repetition condition, identical patterns were repeated; in two distorted-repetition conditions, one randomly chosen segment in each sound pattern was replaced either by white noise or by a wrong (...) pitch. In a roving-standard paradigm, sound patterns were repeated 1–12 times in a row before a new pattern occurred. The participants were not informed about the roving rule and had to detect rarely occurring loudness changes. Behavioral detectability of pattern changes was assessed in a subsequent behavioral task. Pattern changes elicited mismatch negativity and P3a, and were behaviorally detected above the chance level in all conditions, suggesting that the auditory system extracts regularities despite distortions in the acoustic input. However, MMN and P3a amplitude were decreased by distortions. At the level of MMN, both types of distortions caused similar impairments, suggesting that auditory regularity extraction is largely determined by the stimulus statistics of matching information. At the level of P3a, wrong-pitch distortions caused larger decreases than white-noise distortions. Wrong-pitch distortions likely prevented the engagement of restoration mechanisms and the segregation of disrupted from true pattern segments, causing stronger informational interference with the relevant pattern information. (shrink)

A basic function of cognition is to detect regularities in sensory input to facilitate the prediction and recognition of future events. It has been proposed that these implicit expectations arise from an internal predictive coding model, based on knowledge acquired through processes such as statistical learning, but it is unclear how different types of statistical information affect listeners’ memory for auditory stimuli. We used a combination of behavioral and computational methods to investigate memory for non-linguistic auditory sequences. Participants (...) repeatedly heard tone sequences varying systematically in their information-theoretic properties. Expectedness ratings of tones were collected during three listening sessions, and a recognition memory test was given after each session. Information-theoretic measures of sequential predictability significantly influenced listeners’ expectedness ratings, and variations in these properties had a significant impact on memory performance. Predictable sequences yielded increasingly better memory performance with increasing exposure. Computational simulations using a probabilistic model of auditory expectation suggest that listeners dynamically formed a new, and increasingly accurate, implicit cognitive model of the information-theoretic structure of the sequences throughout the experimental session. (shrink)

Previous studies of auditory expectation have focused on the expectedness perceived by listeners retrospectively in response to events. In contrast, this research examines predictive uncertainty —a property of listeners' prospective state of expectation prior to the onset of an event. We examine the information-theoretic concept of Shannon entropy as a model of predictive uncertainty in music cognition. This is motivated by the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, which proposes that schematic expectations reflect probabilistic relationships between sensory events learned implicitly through exposure. (...) Using probability estimates from an unsupervised, variable-order Markov model, 12 melodic contexts high in entropy and 12 melodic contexts low in entropy were selected from two musical repertoires differing in structural complexity (simple and complex). Musicians and non-musicians listened to the stimuli and provided explicit judgments of perceived uncertainty (explicit uncertainty). We also examined an indirect measure of uncertainty computed as the entropy of expectedness distributions obtained using a classical probe-tone paradigm where listeners rated the perceived expectedness of the final note in a melodic sequence (inferred uncertainty). Finally, we simulate listeners' perception of expectedness and uncertainty using computational models of auditory expectation. A detailed model comparison indicates which model parameters maximize fit to the data and how they compare to existing models in the literature. The results show that listeners experience greater uncertainty in high-entropy musical contexts than low-entropy contexts. This effect is particularly apparent for inferred uncertainty and is stronger in musicians than non-musicians. Consistent with the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, the results suggest that increased domain-relevant training is associated with an increasingly accurate cognitive model of probabilistic structure in music. (shrink)

Auditory feedback perturbation studies have indicated a link between feedback and feedforward mechanisms in speech production when participants compensate for applied shifts. In spectral perturbation studies, speakers with a higher perceptual auditory acuity typically compensate more than individuals with lower acuity. However, the reaction to feedback perturbation is unlikely to be merely a matter of perceptual acuity but also affected by the prediction and production of precise motor action. This interplay between prediction, perception, and motor execution seems to (...) be crucial for the timing of speech and non-speech motor actions. In this study, to examine the relationship between the responses to temporally perturbed auditory feedback and rhythmic abilities, we tested 45 adult speakers on the one hand with a temporal auditory feedback perturbation paradigm, and on the other hand with rhythm perception and production tasks. The perturbation tasks temporally stretched and compressed segments (onset + vowel or vowel + coda) in fluent speech in real-time. This technique sheds light on the temporal representation and the production flexibility of timing mechanisms in fluent speech with respect to the structure of the syllable. The perception tasks contained staircase paradigms capturing duration discrimination abilities and beat-alignment judgments. The rhythm production tasks consisted of finger tapping tasks taken from the BAASTA tapping battery and additional speech tapping tasks. We found that both auditory acuity and motor stability in finger tapping affected responses to temporal auditory feedback perturbation. In general, speakers with higher auditory acuity and higher motor variability compensated more. However, we observed a different weighting of auditory acuity and motor stability dependent on the prosodic structure of the perturbed sequence and the nature of the response as purely online or adaptive. These findings shed light on the interplay of phonological structure with feedback and feedforward integration for timing mechanisms in speech. (shrink)

The article aims to concretize the phenomenological account concerning the problem of an auditory image. The author considers auditory imagery as a scientific object and compares different treatments of the problem to fix the potential and advantages of its phenomenological interpretation. In the first stage of the study, the author distinguishes the key characteristics of the image by means the lexical analysis. This is the perceptual (predominantly visual) nature of an image, integrality, and essentiality (image as an idea). (...) In the second stage, the understandings of the mental and auditory imagery in physiology, experimental psychology, music psychology, musicology, and interdisciplinary studies are described. In the third stage, the peculiar phenomenological ways of the comprehension of an auditory image are revealed. The phenomenological interest is to pick out consciousness which perceiving of an image equally from the process of perceiving and from entailing in an image. The specific phenomenological stance is placing an auditory image on the bound of transcendent (the process of perceiving) and immanent (an image that is already perceived). The auditory image is conceived as the unity of Modi of its givenness. Most fecks of this Modi are original, they cannot be transferred into other science scopes: they are the interconnection of all moments of the temporal unfolding, self-organization in the time, self-referentiality, non-semanticity, periodicity/randomness, eventuality, quasi-embodiment (physicality). Solely phenomenological problems are problems of the constitution of an auditory image, its life-horizon, intersubjectivity, and regional matching. The author infers that phenomenology does not conceive auditory image as sustained auditory representation, associated with acoustic memory. Its perceptual nature does not play a key role here. Moreover, the perceptual-semantic duality of the image is not fixed by the phenomenological description. The phenomenological approach is unique because it researches auditory data exhaustively but does not use semantic and referential analysis of them. The main feature of phenomenological description is the focus on the unity of auditory image: All the elements of auditory data are interpreted in their synthesis as the different levels of the unity of hearing image. Thus, the phenomenological approach as a whole is the most promising for comprehending such a dominant quality of the auditory image as integrality. (shrink)

Our auditory experience involves the experience of auditory objects—sequences of distinct sounds, or parts of continuous sounds—that are experienced as grouped together into a single sound or “stream” of sounds. In this paper I argue that it is not possible to explain what it is to experience an auditory object as such—i.e. to experience a sequence of sounds as grouped—in purely auditory terms; rather, to experience an auditory object as such is to experience a sequence (...) of sounds as having been (apparently) produced by the same source. (shrink)

Background. Attending to goal-relevant information can leave us metaphorically ‘blind’ or ‘deaf’ to the next relevant information while searching among distracters. This temporal cost lasting for about a half a second on the human selective attention has been long explored using the attentional blink paradigm. Although there is evidence that certain visual stimuli relating to one’s area of expertise can be less susceptible to attentional blink effects, it remains unexplored whether the dynamics of temporal selective attention vary with expertise and (...) objects types in the auditory modality. Methods. Using the auditory version of the attentional blink paradigm, the present study investigates whether certain auditory objects relating to musical and perceptual expertise could have an impact on the transient costs of selective attention. In this study, expert cellists and novice participants were asked to first identify a target sound, and then to detect instrumental timbres of cello or organ, or human voice as a second target in a rapid auditory stream. Results. The results showed moderate evidence against the attentional blink effect for voices independent of participants’ musical expertise. Experts outperformed novices in their overall accuracy levels of target identification and detection, reflecting a clear benefit of musical expertise. Importanly, the musicianship advantage disappeared when the human voices served as the second target in the stream. Discussion. The results are discussed in terms of stimulus salience, the advantage of voice processing, as well as perceptual and musical expertise in relation to attention and working memory performances. (shrink)

Four Distinctions for the Auditory “Wastebasket” of Timbre1.

Multidisciplinary studies indicate that auditory hallucinations may arise from speech perception neurocircuitry without disrupted theory of mind capacities. Computer simulations of excessive pruning in speech perception neural networks provide a model for these hallucinations and demonstrate that connectivity reductions just below a “psychotogenic threshold” enhance information processing. These data suggest a process whereby vulnerability to schizophrenia is maintained in the human population despite reproductive disadvantages of this illness.

This article examines the limits and potential of hospitality through struggles over auditory space in care at the end of life. Drawing upon empirical research and a nurse’s account of noisy mourning in a multicultural hospice ward, I argue that the insurgent force of noise as corporeal generosity can produce impossible dilemmas for care, while also provoking surprising ethical relations and potentialities. Derrida’s ideas about the aporias of the gift and absolute responsibility are used to make sense of the (...) pushy generosity of alterity as it is made to matter through sound. (shrink)

An overview and descriptions of the auditory commitments of ancient Greek song, drama, and acoustic theory from the time of Homer to the death of Euripides, this is the first complete study of the cultural system of sound in Greece.