Hearing: sounds,

objects, attention,
speech
 The subjective sound
psychoacoustics: studying the subjective perception of
sounds
two assumptions (Pap, 2002)
(1) You hear what you hear.
(2) The parameters of subjective sound interact with each other.

physical properties vs. subjective perception

Physical properties of sound
Anatomy of auditory system
 subjective properties of sounds

pitch

loudness timbre
 Perception of loudness

loudness is the perceived intensity / amplitude of

sound
range of perception: 0-130 dB
(1:1012 intensity difference)
• absolute threshold – threshold of different frequencies:
audibility function
 difference threshold: loudness levels
determined by the frequency and intensity
phon: loudness level – sounds with different
frequencies having the same perceived loudness
as a 1000 Hz sound
 equal loudness
contours
Amplitude (dB)

Absolute
threshold

Frequency (Hz)
 Perception of pitch
pitch – the subjective perception of the frequency of sounds
no one-to one correspondence between frequency and pitch
same frequency – different pitch
different frequency – same pitch

pitch perception of pure and complex tones is different

pitch: aspect of hearing that allows sounds to be ordered from low to
high
 Types of sounds

sound level (dB)

pure tone
pure tone

frequency

complex frequency-components

sound level (dB)

tone

complex
tone
amplitude

noise frequency
spectrum
time 11

oscillogram
scaling of pitch
frequency
only for pure tones
mel
1000 Hz pure tone : 1000 mel
two times higher : 2000 mel
half as high: 500 mel
subjective scaling
musical scale
narrow range
 Pitch of pure tones
determinants
frequency
intensity
duration
certain duration needed for pitch perception
10-15 ms – depends on the frequency

theories
theories of the basilar membrane
place theory
frequency theory
 Frequency theory
Rutherford
basilar membrane = membrane of telephone
BM resonates according to the frequency of the sound –
creates a similar frequency firing in the auditory nerve
problems
BM is not homogenous: thicker and broader at the apex
neurons cannot fire above 1000 Hz
 Place theory
Helmholtz
basilar membrane = piano
different frequency cause the resonance of different parts of BM –
resonance theory
BM consist of fibres similar to the strings of piano

problem
there are no such fibres in BM
 Pitch of complex sounds
fundamental frequency and harmonics
what defines pitch?
frequency of fundamental
problem: missing fundamental
virtual pitch

frequency

time
• how is the pitch of complex tones perceived?
• complex, learned pattern perception
 Perception of timbre

most important subjective property of sounds

quality of sound
difference between the sound of piano and saxophone
determinants
spectral content of sound
temporal properties – amplitude envelop
 Perception of auditory objects

object perception

dividing the world into meaningful elements

where is the object (localization)
what is it (identification)
 Sound localization

source and distance of sounds

dominance of vision – spatial quality of auditory
objects
no spatial information in hearing – inference
binaural and monaural localization
Binaural localization
interaural intensity difference (IID)
interference with the head
depends on frequency – not working for
low sounds

cone of confusion
interaural time difference (ITD)
• neural mechanism for interaural time difference
• binaural cells in the oliva superior
• Jeffres (1948) delay line

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duplex theory of binaural localization
Stevens and Newman (1934)

dual mechanism
low frequency sounds: ITD
high frequency sounds: IID
 Monaural localization
• ear - pinna
• head-related transfer function
• spectral content of sound is changed by the complex
interaction of pinna, head and sound direction

pinna direct
sound

idirect
sound

spectrum of sound source spectrum modified by the

pinna

ear
canal 26
 Auditory objects and events
• auditory scene analysis (Bregman, 1990)
frequency

time

spectogram

all the info available to the auditory system

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Scene analysis

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• grouping – figure-ground separation
• Gestalt-principles
• result of grouping - auditory objects – auditory
streams
• unit of auditory perception
• basic features (loudness, pitch, localization) are binded
to the auditory streams

• grouping – auditory stream segregation

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 Auditory attention

direction of attention: irrelevant information compete for the processing

mechanisms
selective attention
 Cocktail-party situation

many people converse in room, and we need to follow the

message of our partner in the cacophony
experimental paradigm: dichotic listening situation
 dichotic listening situation

Cherry (1953): shadowing technique

results:
what do we notice from the unattended text?
change of gender
other physical properties
what do we not notice?
change from one language to the other
speech is played backwards

explanation: attentional selection as a filtering mechanism

filter lets in attended stimuli, but filters non-attended stimuli
works at the early stage of information processing – physical
parameters are retained
Broadbent: early selection model of attention
• adaptation: protects the systems from too much outside
information
• limited capacity system – e.g. short term memory
• ”bottleneck” of processing
Perception of speech
 Perception of speech sounds

among all the auditory objects, speech sounds created by

other humans are the most important ones

goal of speech: expressing our thoughts and feelings, and

understanding how others react to those

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Process of linguistic communication
process of speech perception:
sentences – words – speech sounds
speech perception
recognition of speech sounds
linking speech sounds to phonemes
speech sound: acoustical information related to speech
phoneme: mental representation of speech sounds
minimal pairs: “let” – “lit”; “pat” – “bat”
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 Speech production organs

• two basic parts

• source: vibration of vocal cord / fold
• filter: articulation
 Acoustic characteristics of speech sounds

• complex, periodic

relative amplitude (dB)

vibrations created by the frequency
(kHz)

vocal cords
• spectral content modified
by the articulatory frequency
(kHz)

channel
 Visual representation of speech sounds
• fundamental frequency (f0) + formants (f1, f2, etc.)
• spectrogram
 Perception of speech sounds

two stages
separating speech sound from the acoustical environment
linking speech sounds to phoneme representations
acoustic-phonetic variance problem
speed of speech sounds
variability of talkers
segmentation
continuous acoustic input – discrete representation

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context dependent variability – coarticulation
change in the parameters of a speech sound due to other sounds
before or after

formant transition

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 Speech code and speech mode

Liberman – speech is a kind of code à speech perception –

decoding
is there any special speech mode?
two pieces of evidence
hemispheric differences in processing speech
REA – Right Ear Advantage
categorical perception
small acoustic changes do not lead to perceptual changes

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• Liberman et al (1957)

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 Theories of speech perception

motor theory
close link between perception and production
phonemes with variable physical properties are perceived the
same, because we intend them to be the same during production
distinctive feature detection theory
phonetic feature detectors

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