Subject: sometimes behave so strangely From: Eric LePage <ericlepage@xxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 09:20:04 +1100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Hi Diana and list, Thank you for drawing attention to this interesting phenomenon. I add two points from seeing it in a more general context: 1) Having "learned" the musical possibilities of the auditory demonstration, it is impossible to unlearn it, unlike the Escher visual illusions which can be mentally flipped e.g. seeing stairs going up and alternately going down. The replaying of the demonstration one finds the musical template is applied to the first instance of the phrase. 2) I wonder if it belongs to the more general ability of human pattern recognition, e.g. finding elephants among clouds in the sky; and/or co-incidence detection, e.g. driving past "McIntosh Street" and hearing someone mention "McIntosh" on the car radio at the same instant? This kind of things happens to me all the time. Regards, Eric LePage www.oaericle.com.au